F. SCOTT FITZGERALD QUOTES
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The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, "The Crack Up"
Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Tender is the Night
The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We’ve done that for so long that we've forgotten there’s any other way.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, This Side of Paradise
The years between thirty-five and sixty-five revolve before the passive mind as one unexplained, confusing merry-go-round. True, they are a merry-go-round of ill-gaited and wind-broken horses, painted first in pastel colors, then in dull grays and browns, but perplexing and intolerably dizzy the thing is, as never were the merry-go-rounds of childhood or adolescence; as never, surely, were the certain-coursed, dynamic roller-coasters of youth. For most men and women these thirty years are taken up with a gradual withdrawal from life.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, "O Russet Witch!"
Isn’t Hollywood a dump—in the human sense of the word. A hideous town, pointed up by the insulting gardens of its rich, full of the human spirit at a new low of debasement.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, letter, Jul. 29, 1940
Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, letter to his daughter, Aug. 24, 1940
Boredom is not an end-product, is comparatively rather an early stage in life and art. You’ve got to go by or past or through boredom, as through a filter, before the clear product emerges.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, The Crack-Up
Action is character.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, Notes for The Last Tycoon
Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds; they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, "Notebook O," The Crack-Up
No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, The Great Gatsby
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