Quote 1
[Georgette] looked up to be kissed. She touched me with one hand and I put her hand away. "Never mind."
"What’s the matter? You sick?"
"Everybody’s sick. I’m sick too. " (3.4)
Everyone we encounter in the urban space of Paris is sick with something – mostly with the general sense of malaise that appears to be symptomatic of the postwar condition.
Quote 2
"Have any fun last night?" I asked.
"No, I don’t think so."
"How’s the writing going?"
"Rotten. I can’t get this second book going."
"That happens to everyone."
"Oh. I’m sure of that. It just gets me worried, though." (5.7)
This exchange between Robert Cohn and Jake reveals Cohn’s increasing anxieties about his writing and his general uncertainty about everything, even how much fun he had the previous night. His arrogance is beginning to falter as writing grows more and more difficult.
Quote 3
"You know it makes me feel rather good deciding not to be a b****."
"Yes."
"It’s sort of what we have instead of God."
"Some people have God," I said. "Quite a lot." (19.55)
After leaving Romero, Brett finally feels as though she’s done something right, even if it makes her miserable; this gives her a sense of some kind of spiritual wholeness for the first time, which she puts in the place of God. Jake, whose faith perseveres throughout the novel, corrects her when she implies that nobody believes in God in their world.
Quote 4
"When I think of the hell I’ve put chaps through. I’m paying for it all now."
"Don’t talk like a fool," I said. "Besides, what happened to me is supposed to be funny. I never think about it."
"Oh, no. I’ll lay you don’t."
"Well, let’s shut up about it."
"I laughed about it too, myself, once." She wasn’t looking at me. "A friend of my brother’s came home that way from Mons. It seemed like a hell of a joke. Chaps never know anything, do they?"
"No," I said. "Nobody ever knows anything." (4.4)
Brett sees Jake’s ordeal as a punishment for her own mistreatment of men (rather a selfish way of approaching it). She admits that even she has laughed about a similar situation before it affected her directly—emasculated men are "supposed" to be comic figures, rather than tragic ones.
Quote 5
Cohn smiled again and sat down. He seemed glad to sit down. What the hell would he have done if he hadn’t sat down? "You say such damned insulting things, Jake." "I’m sorry. I’ve got a nasty tongue. I never mean it when I say nasty things."
"I know it," Cohn said. "You’re really about the best friend I have, Jake."
God help you, I thought. (5.10)
Cohn’s guileless admission of friendship sets the scene for a man-to-man moment of honest affection—but instead, we (like Jake) just feel embarrassed that Cohn has put himself out there.
Quote 6
"You wouldn’t believe it. It’s like a wonderful nightmare."
"Sure," I said. "I’d believe anything. Including nightmares."
"What’s the matter? Feel low?"
"Low as hell."
"Have another absinthe. Here, waiter! Another absinthe for this señor."
"I feel like hell," I said.
"Drink that," said Bill. "Drink it slow."
It was beginning to get dark. The fiesta was going on. I began to feel drunk but I did not feel any better.
"How do you feel?"
"I feel like hell."
"Have another?"
"It won’t do any good."
"Try it. You can’t tell; maybe this is the one that gets it. Hey, waiter! Another absinthe for this señor!" (18.53)
Following the Brett-Romero-Cohn drama, the only thing Jake can fall back on is alcohol—however, this time even booze doesn’t do the trick. What he needs, clearly, is something to cure rather than simply cover up his problems.
Quote 7
"It’s funny what a wonderful gentility you can get in the bar of a big hotel," I said.
"Barmen and jockeys are the only people who are polite anymore."
"No matter how vulgar a hotel is, the bar is always nice." (19.53)
Brett and Jake hang on to an old-fashioned idea of gentility associated with hotel bars (and curiously enough, horse racing)—in this scene, the hotel bar is a place of refuge from the pressures of the outside world and the consequences of Brett’s actions.
Quote 8
"Don’t get drunk, Jake," she said. "You don’t have to."
"How do you know?"
"Don’t," she said. "You’ll be all right."
"I’m not getting drunk," I said. "I’m just drinking a little wine. I like to drink wine."
"Don’t get drunk," she said. "Jake, don’t get drunk." (19.58)
For the only time, Brett actually begs Jake to stay sober; she doesn’t want to drink herself, and needs him to stay with her in her state of honesty and unhappiness.
Quote 9
"It’s funny," I said. "It’s very funny. And it’s a lot of fun, too, to be in love."
"Do you think so?" her eyes looked flat again.
"I don’t mean fun that way. In a way it’s an enjoyable feeling."
"No," she said. "I think it’s hell on earth." (4.4)
Brett can’t handle her feelings for Jake—she wants him but can’t have him, which creates the sensation of "hell on earth" for her. Jake, on the other hand, experiences a kind of simultaneous pain and pleasure in seeing Brett.
Quote 10
"Couldn’t we live together, Brett? Couldn’t we just live together?"
"I don’t think so. I’d just tromper you with everybody. You couldn’t stand it." (7. 7)
Jake attempts to find some kind of unconventional solution to their no sex problem, but Brett knows herself too well to accept it. Her statement that she’d just tromper (cheat on) Jake with everyone is true, and both of them know it.
Quote 11
"Do you still love me, Jake?"
"Yes," I said.
"Because I’m a goner," Brett said.
"How?"
"I’m a goner. I’m mad about the Romero boy. I’m in love with him I think."
"I wouldn’t be if I were you."
"I can’t help it. I’m a goner. It’s tearing me all up inside." (16. 48)
Brett expresses a marked sense of resignation here; she recognizes that her feelings for Romero are actually love, or something akin to it, at least, which she links to death ("I’m a goner"). This reiterates Brett’s earlier claim, in relation to Jake, that love is hell on earth.
Quote 12
"Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
"Yes," I said. "Isn’t it pretty to think so?" (19.60)
This line gets us every time. As the novel closes, Jake doesn’t even have the energy to imagine a happy ending – he knows that he and Brett can’t be together, and now that this possibility has been irrevocably cancelled out, he recognizes that it could never have happened, even in the past. The idea of their relationship is simply a pretty but impossible dream.
Quote 13
"Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that." (2.7)
Jake opens up inadvertently here—we learn that he went through a stage of wandering simply to escape himself, also.
Quote 14
"They’re a fine lot," I said. "There’s one American woman down here now that collects bull-fighters." (16.8)
Again, Jake separates himself from the other Americans—he’s not limited to their view of the world. If anything, he’s disgusted by it.
Quote 15
"I got hurt in the war," I said.
"Oh, that dirty war."
We would probably have gone on and discussed the war and agreed that it was in reality a calamity for civilization, and perhaps would have been better avoided. I was bored enough. Just then from the other room someone called: "Barnes! I say Barnes! Jacob Barnes!" (3.9)
The banal discussion of the war that Jake and Georgette narrowly escape is one that’s unsatisfactory and not comprehensive. We get the feeling that there’s a lot more to be said about the war, but nobody knows how to communicate it yet.
Quote 16
"When did she marry Ashley?"
"During the war. Her own true love had just kicked off with the dysentery."
"You talk sort of bitter."
"Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I was just trying to give you the facts." (5.8)
A lot of things happen in wartime that should not otherwise come to pass—in this case, the marriage of Brett to Lord Ashley. We have to wonder if Jake’s telling the whole truth… we know that he is in fact Brett’s "own true love" (in her words and his) and that she can’t marry him because of his handicap. Hmm…