THE GREAT GATSBY CHAPTER 3 QUOTES

“I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited – they went there.”

“We talked for a moment about some wet, grey little villages in France. Evidently he lived in this vicinity, for he told me that he had just bought a hydroplane, and was going to try it out the next morning.”

“Most of the remaining women were now having fights with men said to be their husbands. One of the girls in yellow was flipping her bare shoulders from side to side.”

“I had taken two finger-bowls of champagne, and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental, and profound.”

“The band was playing ‘Home Sweet Home’, the smiles were restrained and put on for the guests’ delight, and seemed to ask for something in return – a dance, a glance, a kiss – someone to bring back the sun, to make this moment last forever.”

“I was looking down from the upper balcony and watching the spectacle below. The throng of people saw Gatsby suddenly, blinkingly, in the spotlight. There he was, blinking at me from the end of the dock – a single green light, minute and far away.”

“I decided to have a look at the house, which was even more elaborate inside than I expected. The rooms were so bright with starlight that when you glanced at the roof you could see home radiating from the bedposts, and every little button on the fabric-seats of the chairs.”

“One of the girls in yellow was chasing a young man with her lips, trying to kiss him as he shot by. He nodded an acknowledgment, but kept out of her reach, and retreated into the house, calling her his ‘beautiful little fool’.”

“Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes.”

“An hour later the front door opened nervously, and Gatsby, in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold coloured tie, hurried in.”

“A sudden emptiness seemed to flow now from the windows and the great doors, endowing with complete isolation the figure of the host, who stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell.”

“I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.”

“There was music from my neighbour’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” FULL HEART QUOTES

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

“People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, acquired each other in silent, inexplicable promiscuity.”

“I was on my way to get roaring drunk from sheer embarrassment when Jordan Baker came out of the house and stood at the head of the marble steps, leaning a little backward and looking with contemptuous interest down into the garden.”

“A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up towards the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.”

“The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur.”

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

“Gatsby, in a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-colored tie, hurried in.”

“It’s a triumph. What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop, too — didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?”

“I was alone. I don’t know whether Jordan saw her, but he nodded casually in my direction so I withdrew into the night, and watched.”

“Except for the amateurish handling of the divers, the sight might have been a great success.”

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”