Цитаты из книги Великий Гэтсби

The relentless beating heat was beginning to confuse me and I had a bad moment there before I realized that so far his suspicions hadn’t alighted on Tom. He had discovered that Myrtle had some sort of life apart from him in another world, and the shock had made him physically sick. I stared at him and then at Tom, who had made a parallel discovery less than an hour before—and it occured to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.

He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: “I never loved you.” After she had obliterated four years with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken. One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house—just as if it were five years ago. “And she doesn’t understand,” he said. “She used to be able to understand. We’d sit for hours—” He broke off and began to walk up and down a desolate path of fruit rinds and discarded favors and crushed flowers. “I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.” “Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!” He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand. “I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding determinedly. “She’ll see.” He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was.

Ослепленный ярким светом фар, одуревший от беспрерывного воя клаксонов, призрак пошатывался из стороны в сторону, пока наконец не заметил человека в пыльнике. — В чем дело? — невозмутимо осведомился он. — Бензин кончился? — Вы взгляните сюда! Несколько пальцев указывало на ампутированное колесо. Он уставился было на него, потом поднял глаза вверх, будто заподозрил, что оно свалилось с неба. — Отлетело напрочь, — пояснил кто-то. Он кивнул. — А я и не зам-метил, что мы с-стоим. Пауза. Потом, с шумом набрав воздух в легкие и расправив плечи, он деловито спросил: — Кто-нибудь знает, где тут м-можно за- заправиться? С десяток голосов (часть из них звучала немногим более твердо) принялись втолковывать ему, что между машиной и колесом более не существует физической связи. — А вы задним ходом, — посоветовал он, немного подумав. — Назад, потом вперед. — Так нет же колеса! Он помедлил в нерешительности. — П-попробовать-то можно, — сказал он наконец.