Who Said It?
“I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.”
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Nick
“he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way…I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light…that might have been the end of a dock.”
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Gatsby
“They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together.”
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Daisy and Tom
“That's what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen”
Speaker: Daisy Character Described: Tom
“’I told that boy about the ice…these people “’I told that boy about the ice…these people! You have to keep after them all the time!’ She laughed at me pointlessly.”
Speaker: Myrtle Character Described: Myrtle
“The fact that he had one [a mistress] was insisted upon wherever he was known. His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomever he knew.”
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Tom
“I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn't hardly know I wasn't getting into a subway train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live forever; you can't live forever.”
Speaker: Myrtle Character Described: Myrtle
“You look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody's looking at him “You look at him sometimes when he thinks nobody's looking at him. I'll bet he killed a man."
Speaker: Party Guest (yellow dress girl) Character Described: Gatsby
“Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.”
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Nick
“At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others…young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.”
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Nick
“The day before the wedding he gave her a string of pearls valued at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
Speaker: Jordan Character Described: Tom
“He was never quite still; there was always a tapping foot somewhere or the impatient opening and closing of a hand.”
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Gatsby
“I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then “I suppose he'd had the name ready for a long time, even then. His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people – his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all.”
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Gatsby
“There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency…was not enough to him anymore”
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Tom
“She was…completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she ware balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me…she gave no hint of it”
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Jordan
“I decided to go East and learn the bond business “I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man.”
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Nick
“I hope she’ll be a fool. That’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool”
Speaker: Daisy Character Described: Daisy
“It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body”
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Tom
“You don’t know? …I thought everybody knew…Tom’s got some woman in New York”
Speaker: Jordan Character Described: Tom/Jordan
“I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away”
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Nick
“there was an excitement in her voice that men who cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered, ‘Listen’
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Daisy
“Now don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are”
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Tom
“I'd never seen a girl so mad about her husband “I'd never seen a girl so mad about her husband. If he left the room for a minute she'd look around uneasily, and say: "Where's Tom gone?" and wear the most abstracted expression until she saw him coming in the door”
Speaker: Jordan Character Described: Daisy
“Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope”
Speaker: Nick Character Described: Nick