Madeleine August

“She was dazzling-- alight; it was agony to comprehend her beauty in a glance.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was 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 eternal 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, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned