Ten Most Relevant Words: The Great Gatsby, Chapter 1

I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"--it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.

All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me and finally said, "Why--ye-es" with very grave, hesitant faces.

The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard--it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden.

His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed.

When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.

I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.

The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.

"I know you didn't mean to but you did do it. That's what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great big hulking physical specimen of a¾ "

The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said.