{"author":"F. Scott Fitzgerald","author_id":"F.+Scott+Fitzgerald","total_quotes":325,"quotes":[{"text":"In April war was declared with Germany. Wilson and his cabinet—a cabinet that in its lack of distinction was strangely reminiscent of the twelve apostles—let loose the carefully starved dogs of war, and the press began to whoop hysterically against the sinister morals, sinister philosophy, and sinister music produced by the Teutonic temperament. Those who fancied themselves particularly broad-minded made the exquisite distinction that it was only the German Government which aroused them to hysteria; the rest were worked up to a condition of retching indecency. Any song which contained the word 'mother' and the word 'kaiser' was assured of a tremendous success. At last every one had something to talk about—and almost every one fully enjoyed it, as though they had been cast for parts in a sombre and romantic play.","author":"F. Scott Fitzgerald","tags":["jazz-age","narcissism","novel","propaganda","semi-autobiography","the-great-war","world-war-i"],"id":2685,"author_id":"F.+Scott+Fitzgerald"},{"text":"I saw that for a long time I had not liked people and things, but only followed the rickety old pretense of liking. I saw that even my love for those closest to me had become only an attempt to love, that my casual relations -- with an editor, a tobacco seller, the child of a friend, were only what I remembered I should do, from other days. All in the same month I became bitter about such things as the sound of the radio, the advertisements in the magazines, the screech of tracks, the dead silence of the country -- contemptuous at human softness, immediately (if secretively) quarrelsome toward hardness -- hating the night when I couldn't sleep and hating the day because it went toward night. I slept on the heart side now because I knew that the sooner I could tire that out, even a little, the sooner would come that blessed hour of nightmare which, like a catharsis, would enable me to better meet the new day.","author":"F. Scott Fitzgerald","tags":["depression","solitude"],"id":2753,"author_id":"F.+Scott+Fitzgerald"},{"text":"There’s a writer for you,” he said. “Knows everything and at the same time he knows nothing.” [narrator]It was my first inkling that he was a writer. And while I like writers—because if you ask a writer anything you usually get an answer—still it belittled him in my eyes. Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It’s like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying—only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.","author":"F. Scott Fitzgerald","tags":["actors","descriptions","insider","people","perceptions","writers"],"id":2992,"author_id":"F.+Scott+Fitzgerald"},{"text":"There were days when Amory resented that life had changed from an even progress along a road stretching ever in sight, with the scenery merging and blending, into a succession of quick, unrelated scenes...","author":"F. Scott Fitzgerald","tags":["aging","coming-of-age"],"id":3394,"author_id":"F.+Scott+Fitzgerald"},{"text":"As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way and denied so vehemently an knowledge of his movements that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table--the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone.","author":"F. Scott Fitzgerald","tags":["akward","alone","lost","purposeless","single","uncomfortable"],"id":6447,"author_id":"F.+Scott+Fitzgerald"},{"text":"Her eyes in the half-light suggested night and violets, and for a moment he stirred again to that half-forgotten remoteness of the afternoon.","author":"F. Scott Fitzgerald","tags":["beauty","infatuation"],"id":14518,"author_id":"F.+Scott+Fitzgerald"},{"text":"There are always those to whom all self-revelation is contemptible, unless it ends with a noble thanks to the gods for the Unconquerable Soul.","author":"F. Scott Fitzgerald","tags":["depression","self-revelation"],"id":14973,"author_id":"F.+Scott+Fitzgerald"},{"text":"Some men escape the grip. Maybe their wives have no social ambitions; maybe they've hit a sentence or two in a 'dangerous book' that pleased them; maybe they started on the treadmill as I did and were knocked off. Anyway, they're the congressmen you can't bribe, the Presidents who aren't politicians, the writers, speakers, scientists, statesmen who aren't just populate grab-bags for a half-dozen women and children.","author":"F. Scott Fitzgerald","tags":["ambition","genuine","unaffected"],"id":15124,"author_id":"F.+Scott+Fitzgerald"},{"text":"Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken...","author":"F. Scott Fitzgerald","tags":["thought-provoking"],"id":19386,"author_id":"F.+Scott+Fitzgerald"},{"text":"Writers aren't exactly people.... They're a whole bunch of people trying to be one person.","author":"F. Scott Fitzgerald","tags":["f","fitzgerald","one","people","quote","quotes","scott","writer","writers"],"id":20745,"author_id":"F.+Scott+Fitzgerald"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":325,"pages":33,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}