Zelda Fitzgerald Quotes

“They had created themselves together, and they always saw themselves, their youth, their love, their lost youth and lost love, their failures and memories, as a sort of living fiction.”
― Elizabeth Hardwick, Seduction and Betrayal

“... while I bathed, while I tried but failed to sleep, I considered how I might become more like the women I respected and admired. Surrounded as I was by ambitious, accomplished women, I couldn't ignore the little voice in my head that said maybe I was supposed to shed halfway, and do something significant. Contribute something. Accomplish something. Choose. Be.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

“Mr. Fitzgerald is a novelist and Mrs. Fitzgerald is a novelty”
― Ring Lardner

“This was Scott. This is Scott, always looking back to try to figure out how to go forward, where happiness and prosperity must surely await.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

“I married the heroine of my stories.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Won’t we be quite the pair? You with your bad heart, me with my bad head. Together, though, we might have something worthwhile.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald

“The past would haunt when the present let up, and always, always the future would loom with its certainty of tragedy and pain.”
― Erika Robuck, Call Me Zelda

“Scott is gone.
I've had two days with this truth. This truth and me, we're acquainted now, past the shock of our first unhappy meeting and into the uneasy-cohabitation stage. Its barbs are slightly duller than they were that first night, when even breathing felt agonizing and wrong. Tootsie and Marjorie hovered over me, waiting to see whether I'd collapse, while Mama looked on, white-faced, from her rocker by the fire. "Gone?" I would whisper, to no-one in particular. I, too, waited for me to be overwhelmed - but all that happened was what happens to anyone who has lost their one love: my heart cleaved into two parts, before and foreverafterward.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

“Kiss me, lover. One darling kiss.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald

“In this couple defects were multiplied, as if by a dangerous doubling; weakness fed upon itself without a counterstrength and they were trapped, defaults, mutually committed, left holes everywhere in their lives. When you read their letters to each other it is often necessary to consult the signature in order to be sure which one has done the writing. Their tone about themselves, their mood, is the fatal one of nostalgia--a passive, consuming, repetitive poetry. Sometimes one feels even its most felicitious and melodious moments are fixed, rigid in experession, and that their feelings have gradually merged with their manner, fallen under the domination of style. Even in their suffering, so deep and beyond relief, their tonal memory controls the words, shaping them into the Fitzgerald tune, always so regretful, regressive, and touched with a careful felicity.”
― Elizabeth Hardwick, Seduction and Betrayal

“Remembrance. Even more, confession. It did always made the heavy things come loose.”
― Erika Robuck, Call Me Zelda

“I hope I'll never get ambitious enough to try anything. It's so much nicer to be damned sure I could do it better than other people - and I might not could if I tried...”
― Nancy Milford, Zelda

“It's terrible to allow conventional habits to gain a hold on a whole household; to eat, sleep and live by clock ticks.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald

“Every sort of trouble I can think of, we've tried it out- become expert at some of it, even, so much so that I've come to wonder whether artists in particularity seek out hard times the way flowers turn their faces toward the sun.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

“But it was not her beauty that was arresting. It was her style, a sort of insolence toward life, her total lack of caution, her fearless and abundant pride.”
― Nancy Milford

“It was not, Zelda wrote, prosperity or the softness of life, or any instability that marred the war generation; it was a great emotional disappointment resulting from the fact that life moved in poetic gestures when they were younger and had since settled back into buffoonery.”
― Nancy Milford, Zelda

“She did as she pleased, regarding life as 'an inexhaustible counter', from which she seemed to be continually picking out presents for herself.”
― Judith Mackrell, Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation

“Being close to him with her face in the space between his ear and his stiff army collar was like being initiated into the subterranean reserves of a fine fabric store exuding the delicacy of cambrics and linen and luxury bound in bales.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“In my head, I am Zelda
and this is my party, but the truth is
it’s almost morning, truth is
I’m the worker bee and not the queen.”
― Kelli Russell Agodon, Dialogues with Rising Tides

“She thinks of Dixie with excited identity as being some adult part of herself divorced from her by transfiguring years, like a very sunburned arm which might not appear familiar if you had been unconscious of its alterations.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“She walked towards the edge.

"Wait," Sara said suddenly. "No, this is mad. You could kill yourselves."

Zelda tuned to her and said: "Oh, but Say-ra. Didn't you know? We're not conservationists." And then she jumped.”
― Liza Klaussmann, Villa America

“Wait," Sara said suddenly. "No, this is mad. You could kill yourselves."

Zelda turned to her and said: "Oh, but, Say-ra. Didn't you know? We're not conservationists." And then she jumped.”
― Liza Klaussmann, Villa America

“I never wanted to be just like Zelda
but you’ve stolen all the words
I wanted to say to you in the night.”
― Laika Constantino, Hearts On A Page, Volume Three