Great Gatsby Quotes about Lies and Deception
Tom tells Nick "don't believe everything you hear" (page 24).
Rumors about Gatsby precede him: "They say he's a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm's. That's where all his money comes from" (page 37).
"Someone told me they thought he killed a man once" (page 48).
"it's more that he was a German spy during the war" (page 48).
"It was testimony to the romantic speculation he inspired that there were whispers about him from those who had found little that it was necessary to whisper about in this world" (page 48).
Gatsby's books are real but he "didn't cut the pages" (page 50).
Tom lies saying that Daisy was a catholic: "Daisy was nota Catholic and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie"( page 38).
About Jordan Baker: "The bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something - most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don't in the beginning" (page 62).
"It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people" (page 78).
"Daisy's
voice on a clear artificial note" (page 91).
"Gatsby, his hands still in his pockets, was reclining against the mantelpiece
in a strained counterfeit of perfect ease" (page 91).
"His parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people - his imagination had never really accepted them as his parents at all. The truth was the Jay Gatsby, ,of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself" (page 104).
"a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing" (page 105).
"I had one of those renewals of complete faith in him that I'd experienced before" (page 136).
Tom finds out how Gatsby came into possession of all his wealth. "I found out what your' drug stores' were... He and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side-street drug stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. That's one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him and I wasn't far wrong." (page 141).
"For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year" (page 158).
Gatsby's father had a picture of his son's house. "He had shown it so often that I think it was more real to him now than the house itself" (page 180).
Can we trust Nick's account of the story. All evidence is presented through him, yet Jordan says "I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person"( page 186).