Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window. ―Nick Carraway
Nick Carraway, the narrator of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, has some of the best one-liners in the book—and most of them are delivered with a shrug that says I know, right?
Nick Carraway wasn’t necessarily the smartest or most interesting person in his circle of rich friends on Long Island during the 1920s, but he had an exceptional way with words that made him stand out from all the rest—and that should inspire you to look at your own life in a new way, too.
Read on to discover 54 of our favorite quotes from the novel’s wry and sarcastic narrator, along with insights into why they are so impactful and memorable!
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Best Nick Carraway Quotes
There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired. ―Nick Carraway
The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end. ―Nick Carraway
They’re such beautiful shirts, she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before. ―Nick Carraway
Angry, and a half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away. ―Nick Carraway
I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity. ―Nick Carraway
It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment. ―Nick Carraway
No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart. ―Nick Carraway
I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity. ―Nick Carraway
High over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life. ―Nick Carraway
The intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. ―Nick Carraway
The intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. ―Nick Carraway
Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. ―Nick Carraway
‘You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,’ I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. ‘Can’t you talk about crops or something?’ ―Nick Carraway
One thing’s sure and nothing’s surer. The rich get richer and the poor get – children. ―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 ―Nick Carraway
It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered Listen, a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour. ―Nick Carraway
Now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the ‘well-rounded man.’ This isn’t just an epigram – life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all. ―Nick Carraway
All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live forever; you can’t live forever. ―Nick Carraway
Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply. ―Nick Carraway
Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes. ―Nick Carraway
When I passed the ashheaps on the train that morning I had crossed deliberately to the other side of the car. ―Nick Carraway
I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity. ―Nick Carraway
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. ―Nick Carraway
So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight. ―Nick Carraway
Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known. ―Nick Carraway
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’ ―Nick Carraway
Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window. ―Nick Carraway
‘Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge,’ I thought; ‘anything at all….’ Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder. ―Nick Carraway
Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the ‘Saturday Evening Post’ – the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms. ―Nick Carraway
Her wan, scornful mouth smiled, and so I drew her up again closer, this time to my face. ―Nick Carraway
He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself. ―Nick Carraway
They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and . . . then retreated back into their money . . . and let other people clean up the mess they had made. ―Nick Carraway
Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known. ―Nick Carraway
He hurried the phrase ‘educated at Oxford,’ or swallowed it, or choked on it, as though it had bothered him now. And with this doubt, his whole statement fell to pieces, and I wondered if there wasn’t something a little sinister about him, after all. ―Nick Carraway
I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life. ―Nick Carraway
It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment. ―Nick Carraway
A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: “There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired. ―Nick Carraway
Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry. ―Nick Carraway
‘Nevertheless you did throw me over,’ said Jordan suddenly. ‘You threw me over on the telephone. I don’t give a damn about you now, but it was a new experience for me, and I felt a little dizzy for a while.’ ―Nick Carraway
‘You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,’ I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. ‘Can’t you talk about crops or something?’ ―Nick Carraway
The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on to-day. ―Nick Carraway
So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight. ―Nick Carraway
Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more but of this clean, hard, limited person who dealt in universal skepticism and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. ―Nick Carraway
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 parceled out unequally at birth. ―Nick Carraway
Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. ―Nick Carraway
The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night. ―Nick Carraway
That’s my Middle West . . . the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark. . . . 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. ―Nick Carraway
The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. ―Nick Carraway
He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man. ―Nick Carraway
A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth. ―Nick Carraway
Nick Carraway Quotes You’d Love to Tweet
Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window. ―F. Scott Fitzgerald Click To TweetDishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply. ―F. Scott Fitzgerald Click To TweetTomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. ―F. Scott Fitzgerald Click To TweetNo amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart. ―F. Scott Fitzgerald Click To TweetHis dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him. ―F. Scott Fitzgerald Click To TweetSo we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. ―F. Scott Fitzgerald Click To TweetI was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life. ―F. Scott Fitzgerald Click To TweetI am one of the few honest people that I have ever known. ―F. Scott Fitzgerald Click To TweetWhenever you feel like criticizing any one… just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had. ―F. Scott Fitzgerald Click To TweetNick Carraway Quotes with Images
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FAQs
Who is Nick Carraway?
Nick Carraway is the narrator of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby. He’s a young man from a wealthy family who moves to New York City to make his way in the world. He befriends Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire who is obsessed with winning the love of the beautiful Daisy Buchanan.
How does Nick Carraway contribute to The Great Gatsby?
Nick Carraway is the narrator of The Great Gatsby and as such, he is our window into the events of the novel. He is also a very reliable narrator, which is important because he is the only one telling us the story.
What kind of person is Nick Carraway?
Nick is a trustworthy, honest person who is reliable and observant. He is also a very intelligent individual who is able to see through people and their motives. Nick is the perfect person to narrate The Great Gatsby because he is able to provide an objective perspective on the events that take place.
How does the relationship between Nick and Daisy Buchanan change over the course of the novel?
At the beginning of the novel, Nick is starstruck by Daisy and completely enamored with her. He is fascinated by her beauty and her lifestyle. However, as he gets to know her better, he realizes that she is not as perfect as he thought she was. She is selfish and careless, and he comes to see her as a symbol of the shallowness of the upper class.
How many books are written by F. Scott Fitzgerald?
Though he only wrote four novels in his lifetime, F. Scott Fitzgerald is considered one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. His most famous work, The Great Gatsby, has become an iconic representation of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties. Though he struggled with alcoholism and died at a young age, Fitzgerald’s writing continues to inspire readers around the world.
What does F. Scott Fitzgerald convey through the book The Great Gatsby?
The Great Gatsby is a novel about hope, longing, and disappointment. Fitzgerald uses the character of Nick Carraway to explore these themes.
What are some of the best Nick Carraway quotes?
* I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.
* There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.
Who is F. Scott Fitzgerald?
F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American writer of novels and short stories, whose works are the quintessential writings of the Jazz Age. He is considered one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. He attended Princeton University but left before graduating to join the U.S. Army during World War I. After the war, he returned to New York City and began working on his first novel, This Side of Paradise, which was published in 1920. His most famous and well-known work, The Great Gatsby, was published in 1925. Along with Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, Fitzgerald is often referred to as one of the Lost Generation of authors who came of age during World War I.
Conclusion
Nick Carraway is one of the most interesting characters in literature.
His quotes are often poignant and thought-provoking.
If you’re ever feeling lost or confused, take some time to read through these Nick Carraway quotes. They just might give you the clarity and motivation you need to get through whatever it is you’re facing.
What are your favorite Nick Carraway quotes?
By the way, you can know more about the character Nick Carraway on Wikipedia.
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