Nick Carraway

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me."

"They're such careless people. They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money."

"Disapproval hung over the proceedings like the fog."

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

"The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time."

"High above the city, our hero stood on the fifty-second floor of the Ritz."

"I want to see her in her house, said Gatsby. She used to live there."

"Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures."

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

"So it had come to this, and he could think of nothing to say."

"Their house was even more elaborate than I expected."

"I've always been glad I said that. It was the kindest thing I ever did."

"He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves."

"For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's."

"His smile was one of those rare smiles that you may come across four or five times in life."

"The colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever."

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures."

"I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled."

"Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands on the shoulders of Daisy's chair, stood watching."

"The morning was breaking without brightness; there was a quality of fear in the air."

"At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes."

"The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself."

"Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on."

"Involuntarily I glanced seaward, and distinguished nothing except a single green light."

"There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer night."

"So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight."

"Gatsby's house was even more elaborate than I expected."

"I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart."

"One should as a rule respect the previous attachments of one's friends."