Tuesday's Quote of the Day

Little did I know my sophomore year of high school that all these years later I would still be flipping through the pages of a battered copy of "The Great Gatsby."

There's one passage in particular that struck me then, and still strikes me now—both as a writer and a reader.

The description of Gatsby in these few sentences always will remind me of my dear college friend, John Richards.

So wherever you are, John, this one's still for you:

“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 external 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.” ― Francis Scott Fitzgerald