The Great Gatsby

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I try to provide Sticky Books that aren’t necessarily classics, but sometimes we need to consider the classics. They’re classic for a reason. Besides, the name of our site is from an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote. It’s only just that I pay tribute to the best book this wonderful Minnesotan wrote. I hail from the same home-state. If all of this weren’t enough, it’s my lovely wife’s favorite book. Has been since the day I met her 15 years ago. So here you go, wonderfully enchanting and captivating- The Great Gatsby.

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”

“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”

“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”

“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

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

“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.”

“Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.”

“It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking people.”

“And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. 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.”

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Sticky Books are those that you just can’t get out of your head. They stick with you long after you have put the book down and have moved on to something else. These are some of my Sticky Books. I don’t enjoy reviewing books myself. I find I am either full of far too much praise for the book because I know how difficult it can be to write a book, or I am far too negative about a book because, well, I guess I was just in a bad mood. So instead of reviews, I have pulled some of my favorite quotes from each Sticky Book.