Quotes from book

The Beautiful and Damned

“Wine gave a sort of gallantry to their own failure.”

“All I think of ever is that I love you.”

“Art isn't meaningless… It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.”

“It was too late - everything was too late. For years now he had dreamed the world away, basing his decisions upon emotions unstable as water.”

“It seemed that the only lover she had ever wanted was a lover in a dream.”

“A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress.”

“Experience is not worth the getting. It's not a thing that happens pleasantly to a passive you--it's a wall that an active you runs up against.”

“and will I like being called a jazz baby? --You will love it.”

“Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.”

“Everywhere we go and move on and change, something's lost--something's left behind. You can't ever quite repeat anything, and I've been so yours, here”

“in crowded rooms they would form words with their lips for each other's eyes”

“Life plays the same lovely and agonizing joke on all of us.”

“I learned a little of beauty-- enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth…”

“Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear.”

“Life is so damned hard, so damned hard… It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever any more. That's the last and worst thing it does.”

“I don't care about truth. I want some happiness.”

“Don't say 'wife.' I'm your mistress. Wife's such an ugly word. Your 'permanent mistress' is so much more tangible and desirable….”

“Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.”

“The fire blazing in her dark and injured heart seemed to glow around her like a flame.”