Paper 2 Quotes from The Great Gatsby

Daisy on her daughter

That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world - a beautiful little fool.

Sophisticated

I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything… sophisticated — God, I’m so sophisticated!

Nick’s ‘honesty’

I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known'.

Gatsby when he meets Daisy

strained counterfeit of perfect ease, even of boredom

Gatsby on his possessions Daisy sees

he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of the response it drew from her well-loved eyes

Gatsby’s dreams when Daisy visits

Daisy tumbled short of his dreams — not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion

Beginnings of Gatsby

He invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this concept he was faithful to the end

Gatsby on the past

Can’t repeat the past? he asked incredulously. Why of course you can!

Gatsby pressing Daisy about Tom

Just tell him the truth — that you never loved him — and it’s all wiped out forever

Gatsby as Daisy slips away

Only the dream fought on… trying to touch what was no longer tangible

Daisy and Tom after exposure

natural intimacy

Nick compliments Gatsby

They’re a rotten crown, I shouted across the lawn. You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together… I disapproved of him from beginning to end

Daisy and Tom retreat

they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

Ending line

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—to-morrow 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

Nick in/out

I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.