The Great Gatsby

Daisy Buchanan:
Gatsby? What Gatsby?

Nick Carraway:
You can't repeat the past.

Jay Gatsby:
Can't repeat the past?

Nick Carraway:
No...

Jay Gatsby:
Why, of course you can... of course you can.

[last lines]

Nick Carraway:
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning - So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Jordan Baker:
Well, I don't care. He gives large parties, and I like large parties - they're so intimate. Small parties, there isn't any privacy.

Jay Gatsby:
My life, old sport, my life... my life has got to be like this.

[Raises index finger diagonally upwards]

Jay Gatsby:
...It's got to keep going up.

Jay Gatsby:
Old sport.

Tom Buchanan:
I'd rather not be the polo player.

Daisy Buchanan:
[after a long pause] Well, I'm certainly glad to see you again.

Jay Gatsby:
I-I'm certainly glad to see you, as well.

Jay Gatsby:
I knew it was a great mistake for a man like me to fall in love...

Nick Carraway:
Stocks reached record peaks, and Wall Street boomed a steady golden roar. The parties were bigger, the shows were broader, the buildings were higher, the morals were looser, and the ban on alcohol had backfired. Making the liquor cheaper. Wall Street was luring the young and ambitious, and I was one of them.

Daisy Buchanan:
Open another window.

Nick Carraway:
There aren't any more.

Daisy Buchanan:
Then telephone for an axe.

Daisy Buchanan:
All the bright precious things fade so fast... and they don't come back.

Daisy Buchanan:
I hope she'll be a fool - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.

Jay Gatsby:
If there's anything that you want, just ask for it, old sport.

[first lines]

Nick Carraway:
In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice. "Always try to see the best in people," he would say. As a consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all judgements. But even I have a limit.

Nick Carraway:
I just remembered, today's my birthday.

Tom Buchanan:
Happy birthday.

Nick Carraway:
[narrating now] Thirty. The promise of a decade of loneliness. The formidable stroke of 30 died away as Gatsby and Daisy drove on thought the cooling twilight - towards death.

Nick Carraway:
[narrating] They were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and people, and then retreated back into their money and their vast carelessness.

Nick Carraway:
Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.

Daisy Buchanan:
I wish we could just run away.

Jay Gatsby:
Run away? No. Daisy, darling, that... that wouldn't be respectable. We're gonna live here, in this house. You and me.

Jay Gatsby:
It's so sad, because it's so hard to make her understand. It's so hard to make her understand. I've gotten all these things for her. I've gotten all these things for her and now she just... she just wants to run away.

Nick Carraway:
Jay! They're a rotten crowd. You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.

Nick Carraway:
[Voice-over] I was always glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever paid him.

Jay Gatsby:
I knew that when I kissed this girl, I would be forever wed to her.

Nick Carraway:
I expected him to be...

Jordan Baker:
Old and fat?

Nick Carraway:
Yes. Young men just don't drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island.

Tom Buchanan:
Daisy, can't you see who this guy is, with his house and his parties and his fancy clothes? He is just a front for Wolfsheim, a gangster, to get his claws into respectable folk like Walter Chase.

Jay Gatsby:
The only respectable thing about you, old sport, is your money. Your money, that's it. Now I've just as much as you. That means we're equal.

Tom Buchanan:
Oh, no. No. We're different. I am. They are. [points to Daisy] She is. We're all different from you. You see, we were born different. It's in our blood. And nothing that you do or say or steal... or dream up can ever change that. A girl like Daisy...

Jay Gatsby:
[Knocks contents off bar-top & grabs Tom with a raised fist] You shut up! Shut up! You shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

Nick Carraway:
[Voice-over] Gatsby looked, in that moment, as if he had... killed a man.

Nick Carraway:
[to Catherine who was giving him some pills/drugs] Oh no. My nerves are fine, thanks.

Nick Carraway:
His Smile was one of those rare smiles that you may come across four or five times in life. It seem to understand you and believe in you just as you would love to be understood and believed in.

Jay Gatsby:
I never realized how extraordinary a nice girl could be.