F. Scott Fitzgerald

What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.

Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it – three minutes; to collect the data in it – all my life.

There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind.

I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

Action is character.

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.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

The test of a first-fate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

Optimism is the content of small men in high places.

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

Writers aren't exactly people...they're a whole lot of people trying to be one person.

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

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind.

At 18 our convictions are hills from which we look; At 45 they are caves in which we hide.

He waited for the mask to drop off, but at the same time he did not question her right to wear it.