A Midwesterner becomes fascinated with his nouveau riche neighbor, who obsesses over his lost love.

[last lines]
Nick Carraway: Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning - So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Nick Carraway: You can't repeat the past.
Jay Gatsby: Can't repeat the past?
Nick Carraway: No...
Jay Gatsby: Why, of course you can... of course you can.
Jay Gatsby: Old sport.
Daisy Buchanan: I hope she'll be a fool - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.
Jay Gatsby: I knew it was a great mistake for a man like me to fall in love...
Daisy Buchanan: All the bright precious things fade so fast... and they don't come back.
[first lines]
Nick Carraway: In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice. "Always try to see the best in people," he would say. As a consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all judgements. But even I have a limit.
Jay Gatsby: My life, old sport, my life... my life has got to be like this.
[Raises index finger diagonally upwards]
Jay Gatsby: ...It's got to keep going up.
Nick Carraway: [narrating] They were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and people, and then retreated back into their money and their vast carelessness.
Jordan Baker: Well, I don't care. He gives large parties, and I like large parties - they're so intimate. Small parties, there isn't any privacy.
Nick Carraway: Jay! They're a rotten crowd. You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.
Nick Carraway: [Voice-over] I was always glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever paid him.
Jay Gatsby: I knew that when I kissed this girl, I would be forever wed to her.
Jay Gatsby: It's so sad, because it's so hard to make her understand. It's so hard to make her understand. I've gotten all these things for her. I've gotten all these things for her and now she just... she just wants to run away.
Daisy Buchanan: [after a long pause] Well, I'm certainly glad to see you again.
Jay Gatsby: I-I'm certainly glad to see you, as well.
Nick Carraway: Stocks reached record peaks, and Wall Street boomed a steady golden roar. The parties were bigger, the shows were broader, the buildings were higher, the morals were looser, and the ban on alcohol had backfired. Making the liquor cheaper. Wall Street was luring the young and ambitious, and I was one of them.
Daisy Buchanan: Gatsby? What Gatsby?
Jay Gatsby: If there's anything that you want, just ask for it, old sport.
Daisy Buchanan: Open another window.
Nick Carraway: There aren't any more.
Daisy Buchanan: Then telephone for an axe.
Nick Carraway: I just remembered, today's my birthday.
Tom Buchanan: Happy birthday.
Nick Carraway: [narrating now] Thirty. The promise of a decade of loneliness. The formidable stroke of 30 died away as Gatsby and Daisy drove on thought the cooling twilight - towards death.
Nick Carraway: Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.
Tom Buchanan: I'd rather not be the polo player.
Tom Buchanan: Daisy, can't you see who this guy is, with his house and his parties and his fancy clothes? He is just a front for Wolfsheim, a gangster, to get his claws into respectable folk like Walter Chase.
Jay Gatsby: The only respectable thing about you, old sport, is your money. Your money, that's it. Now I've just as much as you. That means we're equal.
Tom Buchanan: Oh, no. No. We're different. I am. They are.
[points to Daisy]
Tom Buchanan: She is. We're all different from you. You see, we were born different. It's in our blood. And nothing that you do or say or steal... or dream up can ever change that. A girl like Daisy...
Jay Gatsby: [Knocks contents off bar-top & grabs Tom with a raised fist] You shut up! Shut up! You shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
Nick Carraway: [Voice-over] Gatsby looked, in that moment, as if he had... killed a man.
Nick Carraway: I expected him to be...
Jordan Baker: Old and fat?
Nick Carraway: Yes. Young men just don't drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island.
Daisy Buchanan: I wish we could just run away.
Jay Gatsby: Run away? No. Daisy, darling, that... that wouldn't be respectable. We're gonna live here, in this house. You and me.
Nick Carraway: His Smile was one of those rare smiles that you may come across four or five times in life. It seem to understand you and believe in you just as you would love to be understood and believed in.
Nick Carraway: [to Catherine who was giving him some pills/drugs] Oh no. My nerves are fine, thanks.
Nick Carraway: They say you killed a man.
Jay Gatsby: Only one?
Jay Gatsby: Summer's almost over. It's sad, isn't it? Makes you want to - I don't know - reach out and hold it back.
Nick Carraway: There'll be other summers.
Jay Gatsby: [Turning to Nick] How 'bout a swim?
Nick Carraway: Maybe later.
Jay Gatsby: Hrmm.
Nick Carraway: I'll give you a call - around noon?
Jay Gatsby: Fine, old sport. I'll be at the pool.
[Jay watches Nick walk away for a moment before calling out to him]
Jay Gatsby: Nick? Thank you.
Nick Carraway: [Nick nods and then continues on his way. But then he suddenly turns back] They're a rotten crowd. You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.
[the two smile at one another and then Nick walks away, waving a hand back over his shoulder]
Jay Gatsby: I never realized how extraordinary a nice girl could be.
Jay Gatsby: How do you do, old sport? I'm Gatsby.
Jay Gatsby: I was raised in America but educated in Oxford. That's a family tradition.
Daisy Buchanan: And when I was in the delivery room, waking up from the ether, I asked the nurse whether it was a boy or a girl. She said it was a girl - and I turned my head to the side and cried. And then I said, I hope she grows up to be a pretty little fool. That's about the best a girl can hope for these days, to be a pretty little fool.
Jay Gatsby: Klipspringer has been here since a party I threw in April. I didn't even realize he was here until two weeks ago.
Daisy Buchanan: Rich girls don't marry poor boys.
Daisy Buchanan: [embracing a shirt and weeping, presumably from joy, as Gatsby gleefully throws dozens of imported golf shirts across the room] I've never seen such beautiful shirts before.
Jordan Baker: [about Gatsby] He's an Oxford man.
Tom Buchanan: Like hell he is, he wears a goddamn pink suit!
Nick Carraway: I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it... He did not know that it was already behind him.
Daisy Buchanan: Nick? Is it really you?
Nick Carraway: It is.
Daisy Buchanan: My old love! I'm paralyzed with happiness!
Tom Buchanan: That dog's a bitch!
Myrtle Wilson: Daisy...
[then sobbing, slowly]
Myrtle Wilson: Daisy...
Nick Carraway: There was music from my neighbor's house through those summer nights. In his enchanted gardens, men and girls came and went like moths, among the whispering and the champagne and the stars. I believe that few people were actually invited to these parties. They just went. They got into automobiles that bore them out to Long Island, and somehow they ended up at Gatsby's door. Come for the party with a simplicity of heart that was it's own ticket of admission.