The Great Gatsby - Theme

"[Daisy] had an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged."

"The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word."

"From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches, and a man named Bunsen, whom I knew at Yale... and the Ismays and the Chrysties (or rather Hubert Auerbach and Mr Chrystie's wife), and Edgar Beaver, whose hair they say, turned cotton-white one winter afternoon for no good reason at all."

"An instinct towards his future glory had led him . . . to the small Lutheran College of St.Olaf's in southern Minnesota. He stayed there two weeks, dismayed at its ferocious indifference to the drums of his destiny."

"There was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room."

"'An Oxford man ... Like hell he is! He wears a pink suit.'"

"... [Gatsby] had certainly taken [Daisy] under false pretences. I don't mean that he had traded on his phantom millions, but he had deliberately given Daisy a sense of security; he let her believe that he was a person from much the same strata as herself..."

"'Jimmy was bound to get ahead. He always had resolves like this or something. Do you notice what he's got about improving his mind? He was always great for that. He told me I ate like a hog once, and I beat him for it.'

He was reluctant to close the book, reading each item aloud and then looking eagerly at me. I think he rather expected me to copy down the list for my own use."

"'I said "God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing. You may fool me, but you can't fool God!'
Standing behind him, Michaelis saw with a shock that he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg, which had just emerged, pale and enormous, from the dissolving night.
'God sees everything,' repeated Wilson.
'That's an advertisement,' Michaelis assured him.'

"And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes - a fresh, green breast of the new world."