# Quote — F.Scott Fitzgerald, Tales of the Jazz Age

> The years between thirty-five and sixty-five revolve before the passive mind as one unexplained, confusing merry-go-round. True, they are a merry-go-round of ill-gaited and wind-broken horses, painted first in pastel colors, then in dull grays and browns, but perplexing and intolerably dizzy the thing is, as never were the merry-go-rounds of childhood or adolescence; as never, surely, were the certain-coursed, dynamic roller-coasters of youth. For most men and women these thirty years are taken up with a gradual withdrawal from life, a retreat first from a front with many shelters, those myriad amusements and curiosities of youth, to a line with less, when we peel down our ambitions to one ambition, our recreations to one recreation, our friends to a few to whom we are anaesthetic; ending up at last in a solitary, desolate strong point that is not strong, where the shells now whistle abominably, now are but half-heard as, by turns frightened and tired, we sit waiting for death.

- Author: [F.Scott Fitzgerald](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fscott-fitzgerald.md)
- Book: [Tales of the Jazz Age](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fscott-fitzgerald/tales-of-the-jazz-age.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald#Tales_of_the_Jazz_Age_(1922)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/fscott-fitzgerald/tales-of-the-jazz-age/the-years-between