Currently reading: The Once and Future King by TH White
F. Scott, Zelda, and Scottie Fitzgerald at Lands End, their home in Sands Point, NY, on Long Island Sound. [via] (”25 Fascinating Photos of Famous Writers at Home” [Temple 2013])
Day 57: “I love her and that’s the beginning and end of everything.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Epitaphs of Famous Authors
1. F. Scott Fitzgerald:
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
2. John Keats:
“Here Lies One Whose Name was Writ in Water”
3. Sylvia Plath:
“Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted.”
4. Robert Frost:
“I had a lovers’ quarrel with the world.”
5. Dorothy Parker:
“Excuse my dust.”
When asked to describe his wife, Scott said, ‘She’s the most charming person in the world.’ Pressed for details, he added fervently, ‘That’s all. I refuse to amplify- excepting she’s perfect.’
‘You don’t think that,’ Zelda put in. ‘You think I’m a lazy woman.’
‘No,’ said Scott. ‘I like it. I think you’re perfect. You’re always ready to listen to my manuscripts at any hour of day or night. You’re charming- beautiful. I believe you clean the ice-box once a week.’
“He and Zelda surrendered to impulses which wouldn’t even have occured to more prosaic souls. The two of them taking hands after a Carnegie Hall concert and running like the wind- like two young hawks- down crowded 57th Street, in and out of traffic. Scott doing handstands in the Biltmore lobby because he hadn’t been in the news that week. Scott and Zelda at the theatre sitting quietly during the funny parts and roaring when the house was still. They got away with it because of their air of breeding and refinement. They seemed so much a lady and a gentleman that it was hard to credit the more outlandish tales about them until they began to happen right before one’s eyes.”
“I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the printed page, they never really happen to you in life.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 - December 21, 1940)
