F. Scott Fitzgerald

1896–1940 · American novelist & Hollywood screenwriter

Fitzgerald was the chronicler of the Jazz Age, author of This Side of Paradise (1920), The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender Is the Night (1934). Broke and out of fashion by the late 1930s, he moved to Hollywood to write for the studios and lived his last years with the gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, who found him after his fatal heart attack in December 1940. He was an obsessive line-editor of his own prose and of hers — which is exactly the setting in which this piece of advice was handed over.

Traced to source

4 quotes we’ve traced to F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy”

Verified

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time”

Verified

“You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say”

Verified

“An Exclamation Point Is Like Laughing at Your Own Joke”

Disputed

On the research bench

Commonly pinned on F. Scott Fitzgerald — under review

1 line flagged as pinned on F. Scott Fitzgerald and queued for a full source trace — not yet verified.

“That Is Part of the Beauty of All Literature. You Discover that Your Longings Are Universal Longings”

Disputed

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