Nick Carraway Quotes

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.

You can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!

I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.

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

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

Whenever you feel like criticizing any one…just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.

I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.

I’m inclined to reserve all judgments.

You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.

Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.

Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned my back on the woman who had never been more interested in me.

It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking people.

I knew right away I made a mistake.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

I was a guide for one summer on the Canadian Rockies and more than anything else I remember this girl’s voice.

I lived at West Egg, the–well, the less fashionable of the two.

Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.

The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself.

But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone–he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward–and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock.

He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room.

I was invited to accompany Gatsby for lunch. Miss Baker recalled.

A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental burden.

One of them was a small leaky news-paper container.

I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others–young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.

I had a human moment there.

I often went there to be alone–or rather, to be with people whom I’d had the illusion of being alone among.

I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all–Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.

Afterward I went outside and sat down on an unhygienic bench and tried to think. It wasn’t easy.

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.

The vitality of his illusion had gone beyond Daisy–beyond everything.

I was ashamed of him–I’ll never forgive myself for not going at the last minute.

It took me half and hour to convince an impassive man that his suspicions were wrong.

I hurt her feelings.

You see how much contempt you’ve got for anything that’s romantic.

Even alone I can’t say I never loved Tom.

What’s the matter, Nick? Do you object to shaking hands with me?

When you went into the bathroom, Bentley turned to me and whispered.

I dislike being told how to behave.

I tried to think about Gatsby then for a moment, but he was already too far away, and I could only remember, without resentment, that Daisy hadn’t sent a message or a flower.

I have read somewhere that the sun which never sets upon the British empire, sets upon Gatsby’s house.

This isn’t just an epigram–life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.

Anything can be said about me except why I failed in my bond business.

Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.

Daisy is young, and her voice is full of money.

His smile was one of those rare smiles that I have to this day.

Blockhead! Inconsiderate blockhead! You don’t withdraw.

I changed my clothes and went next door to Gatsby’s house; they had removed his belongings, for the house.

It was one of those rare smiles.

There was nothing to look at from under the tree except Gatsby’s enormous house, so I stared at it, like Kant.