Nick Carraway

No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth. 

I found myself on Gatsby's side and alone.

Suddenly I wasn't thinking of Daisy or Gatsby anymore, but of this clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in universal skepticism, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm.

She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had." 

They're a rotten crowd. You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.