Great Gatsby

• 'In form no more than a glorified anecdote and not too probably at that' - H.L Mencken
• 'The queer charm, colour, wonder and drama of a young and reckless world' - William Rose Bennet (1925)
• 'A meditation on some of this country's most central ideas...the quest for new life, the preoccupation with class, the hunger for riches' - Jonathan Yardley (2007)
• 'Nick wants to portray Gatsby as 'great' and to ignore or edit anything that might undermine that image' - Claire Stocks (2007)
• 'Life is essentially a cheat...the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure....but the deeper satisfactions that come out of the struggle' - Fitzgerald to Daughter
• 'Nick is considered to be quite reliable, basically honest and ultimately changed by his contact with Gatsby' - David O'Rourke
• 'Fitzgerald discloses in these people a means of spirit, carelessness and absence of loyalties. He cannot hate them, for they are dumb in their senstate selfishness' - Edwin Clark (1925)
• 'Tom's restlessness is an arrogant assertiveness seeking to evade in blister the deep uneasiness of self knowledge' - A.E Dyson
• 'So much of the meaning in Gatsby come out in imagery, it's texture and the complexity of its motives' - Harold Bloom
• 'A curious book, a mystical, glamorous story of today' - Edwin Clark
• 'An emptiness that we see curdling into the viciousness of a monstrous moral indifference as the story unfolds' - Marius Bewley about Daisy
• 'By attempting to maintain his way of life, Tom has reduced whole people to ashes without any thought of consequences' - Christine Ramos
• 'Clown Fitzgerald runs to death in 9 chapters' - H.L Meneken (1925)
• 'The first step that American Fiction has taken since Henry James' - T.S Eliot
• 'For our part, The Great Gatsby might as well be called Ten Nights on Long Island' - Ralph Coghlan
• 'Prominant, well to do family' - About Nick - Chapter 1
• 'rather literary' - About Nick - Chapter 1
• 'Dressed in white / dresses fluttering' - About Daisy - Chapter 1
• 'Low thrilling voice' - About Daisy - Chapter 1
• 'Cruel body' that has 'enormous power' - About Tom - Chapter 1
• 'Brute of a man' - About Tom - Chapter 1
• 'I brought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities' - Nick - Chapter 1
• 'Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window' - Nick - Chapter 1
• 'excellence at twenty one' everything else was 'anti-climatic' - About Tom - Chapter 1
• 'I'm stronger and more of a man than you' - Tom - Chapter 1
• 'Drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together' - About Tom and Daisy - Chapter 1
• 'Its a fine book' - Tom - Chapter 1
• 'sad and lovely face' - About Daisy - Chapter 1
• 'Absurd, charming little laugh' - About Daisy - Chapter 1
• 'The best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool' - Fitzgerald's wife to him
• 'Hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars' - About Gatsby - Chapter 2
• 'Green light' - Gatsby actions - Chapter 2
• 'Blond, spiritless man anemic and slightly handsome' - About George - Chapter 2
• 'Dark blue crepe-de-chine' - Mrytle's clothes - Chapter 2
• 'Soft, coarse voice' - About Mrytle - Chapter 2
• 'as if he was a ghost' - Mrytle walking through George - Chapter 2
• 'short, swift movement' - Tom's violence - Chapter 2
• 'halls and salons and virandas are gaudy with primary colours' - Gatsby Party - Chapter 3
• 'Rules of behaviour associated with an amusement park' - Gatsby Party - Chapter 3
• 'As a promise she'd take care of me in a minute' - About Jordan - Chapter 3