“she was consumed by 3 simple things:
drink, despair, loneliness; and 2 more:
youth and beauty”
— The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“I was sentimental about many things: a woman’s shoes under the bed; one hairpin left behind on the dresser; the way they said, 'I’m going to pee.' hair ribbons; walking down the boulevard with them at 1:30 in the afternoon, just two people walking together; the long nights of drinking and smoking; talking; the arguments; thinking of suicide; eating together and feeling good; the jokes; the laughter out of nowhere; feeling miracles in the air; being in a parked car together; comparing past loves at 3am; being told you snore; hearing her snore; mothers, daughters, sons, cats, dogs; sometimes death and sometimes divorce; but always carring on, always seeing it through; reading a newspaper alone in a sandwich joint and feeling nausea because she’s now married to a dentist with an I.Q. of 95; racetracks, parks, park picnics; even jails; her dull friends; your dull friends; your drinking, her dancing; your flirting, her flirting; her pills, your fucking on the side and her doing the same; sleeping together”
— Women

“I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the
room was like sunlight to me.”
— Factotum

“Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.”
— The Great Gatsby

“I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”
― This Side of Paradise

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

“You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.”
― The Great Gatsby

“Can’t repeat the past?…Why of course you can!”
― The Great Gatsby

“I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go”
― The Beautiful and Damned

“Actually that’s my secret — I can’t even talk about you to anybody because I don’t want any more people to know how wonderful you are.”
― Tender Is the Night

“Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear.”
―The Beautiful and Damned

“I don't ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there'll always be the person I am to-night.”
― Tender Is the Night