HAPPY BIRTHDAY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (September 24, 1896 — December 21, 1940)
“The real Scott is to be found in his notebooks and working papers, where he elaborated so patiently at turning the mess of his life to gold.” —Wilfred Sheed
“He had one of the rarest qualities in all literature, and it’s a great shame that the word for it has been thoroughly debased by the cosmetic racketeers, so that one is almost ashamed to use it to describe a real distinction. Nevertheless, the word is charm — charm as Keats would have used it. Who has it today? It’s not a matter of pretty writing or clear style. It’s a kind of subdued magic, controlled and exquisite, the sort of thing you get from good string quartettes.” —Raymond Chandler
“Once one is caught up into the material world not one person in ten thousand finds the time to form literary taste, to examine the validity of philosophic concepts for himself, or to form what, for lack of a better phrase, I might call the wise and tragic sense of life.” —Scott
