Fitzgerald, F. Scott

"In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day." - in Esquire

"Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you - like music to the musician . . .- or else it is nothing, an empty, formalised bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations." - letter (1940)

"Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you - like music to the musician . . . - or else it is nothing, an empty, formalised bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations." - letter (1940)

"If all your clothes are worn to the same state, it means you go out too much." - The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson

"No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there." - The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson

"Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another." - The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson

"Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy." - The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." - The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson

"You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you've got something to say." - The Crack-Up, ed. Edmund Wilson

"Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness." - The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." - The Great Gatsby