Craig Pearce

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.

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.

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

I was always glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever paid him.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and people, and then retreated back into their money and their vast carelessness.

Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.

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.

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.

Possibly, it had occurred to Gatsby that the colossal significance of that light had vanished forever. Now it was once again just a green light on a dock and his count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.

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.

I remember how we had all come to Gatsby's and guessed at this corruption while he stood before us concealing and incorruptible dream…

Gatsby's real name was James Gatz. His parents were dirt-poor farmers from North Dakota, but he never accepted them as his parents at all. In his own imagination, he was a son of God, destined for future glory.

The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time. In its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world. Anything can happen, now that we have slid over this bridge, I thought. Anything at all. Even Gatsby could happen.

If love be rough with you, be rough with love. Prick love for pricking and you beat love down.

That dreamers often lie.

O! Then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife, and comes in a shape no bigger than an agate-stone, on the fore-finger of an alderman, drawn with a little team of atomies, over men's noses as they lie asleep. Her chariot is an empty hazelnut. Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat. And in this state, she gallops, night by night, through lovers' brains and then they dream of... love! O'er lawyers fingers who straight dream on fees. Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, and then dreams he of cutting foreign throats. And then, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two and sleeps again.

This is the hag, when maids lie on their BACKS, that presses them! And learns them first to bear, making them women of good carriage! This is she! THIS IS SHE!

A plague o' both your houses! They have made worms' meat of me.

Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.

By my heel, I care not.

If love be rough with you, be rough with love. Prick love for pricking and you beat love down.

Good King of Cats, only one of your nine lives!

And when I shall die, take him and cut him up in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will fall in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.

Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this. For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

Then have my lips the sin that they have took?

You kiss by the book.

My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me that I must love a loathed enemy.

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet.

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy, thou art thyself though not a Montague. What is Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. Oh, what's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet; so Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, retain that dear perfection to which he owes without that title. Romeo, doff thy name! And for thy name, which is no part of thee, take all myself.

Goodnight, goodnight! Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.

O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, who monthly changes in her circled orb, lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

Do not swear at all. Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, which is the god of my idolatry, and I'll believe thee.

How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath to say to me that thou art out of breath? Is the news good or bad, answer to that.

Be not so long to speak; I long to die!

Romeo, what's here? Poison? Drunk all, and left no friendly drop to help me after?

Not proud you have, but thankful you have. Proud can I never be of what I hate!

If they do see thee they will murder thee.

What sayest thou? Hast though not a word of joy? Some comfort, Nurse.

You kiss by the book.

Did my heart love 'til now? Forswear its sight. For I never saw true beauty 'til this night.

If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this. My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

Have not saints lips, and holy palmers, too?

Well, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do. They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.

Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.

Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.

I defy you, stars!

Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee doth much excuse the appertaining rage to such a greeting. Villain am I none. Therefore farewell. I see thou knowest me not.

I have night's cloak to hide me from their eyes, but thou love me, let them find me here. My life were better ended by their hate than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.

My Love, my Life. Death is upon thy breath and yet not thy beauty. Thou are not conquered yet, this beauty is in thy lips and thy cheeks and deaths pale flag has not been conquered there. Dear Juliet, why are thou so fair? Should I believe that unsubstantial death is amorous, keeps thee here in dark to be his paramour? Here, oh here will I stay with thee; and never from this place of dim night depart again: here, here I will remain. Eyes look at last, let me take one last embrace, and lips only to the doors to breath and seal with a righteous kiss.

Not mad, but bound more than a mad man is. Shut up in prison, kept without my food, whipped and tormented.