It's fun and easy to pull quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald's
This Side of Paradise. The main character, Amory, is a youthful idealist and romantic, searching for purpose and meaning. He explores the difference between personality and personage, love and disappointment, personal demons, even hitting political themes, ultimately coming to terms with disillusionment.
I picked up this book because I had Fitzgerald's quote, "They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered," up on the wall and my daughter one day asked which book of his it was from. I had assumed that quote was about lovers, but it turns out it was about a mentoring friendship between a boy and a worldly old priest.
The quotes I chose range from lovely turns of phrase to clever or soulful observations (as is always why I keep a quote).
Page 15: She had once been a Catholic, but discovering that priests were infinitely more attentive when she was in process of losing or regaining faith in Mother Church, she maintained an enchantingly wavering attitude.
Page 18:
The invitation to Miss Myra St Claire's bobbing party spent the morning in his coat pocket, where it had an intense physical affair with a dusty piece of peanut brittle.
Page 36: They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.
Page 75: Scurrying back to Minneapolis to see a girl he had known as a child seemed the interesting and romantic thing to do, so without compunction he wired his mother not to expect him... sat in the train and thought about himself for thirty-six hours.
Page 88: Silences were becoming more frequent and more delicious.
Page 106: 'I'm a cynic idealist.' He paused and wondered if that meant anything.
Page 117: He lay awake in the darkness and wondered how much he cared - how much of his sudden unhappiness was hurt vanity - whether he was, after all, temperamentally unfitted for romance.
Page 221: 'It may be an insane love affair,' she told her mother, 'but it's not inane.'
Page 249: There seemed suddenly to be much left in life, if only this revival of old interests did not mean that he was backing away from it again - backing away from life itself.
Page 250: Existence had settled into an ambitionless normality.
Page 274: Often they swam and as Amory floated lazily in the water he shut his mind to all thoughts except those of happy soap-bubble lands where the sun splattered through wind-drunk trees.
Page 308: Suddenly he felt an overwhelming desire to let himself go to the devil - not to go violently as a gentleman should, but to sink safely and sensuously out of sight.
In other news, my novel,
The Runestone's Promise, was listed as a bestseller for 2022 of those published by Unsolicited Press. Thanks to everyone who bought my book! (And if you haven't, you still can! Here's a link:
The Runestone’s Promise by Mari Matthias) 