# Quote — F.Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

> This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
>
> But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high.

- Author: [F.Scott Fitzgerald](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fscott-fitzgerald.md)
- Book: [The Great Gatsby](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fscott-fitzgerald/the-great-gatsby.md)
- Page: 23
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby#Chapter_2) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/fscott-fitzgerald/the-great-gatsby/this-is-a-valley

## More from this book

> No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

p. 2 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fscott-fitzgerald/the-great-gatsby/no-gatsby-turned-out.md)

> Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead,” he suggested. “After that my own rule is to let everything alone."

p. 172 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fscott-fitzgerald/the-great-gatsby/let-us-learn.md)

> "I wouldn’t ask too much of her," I ventured. "You can’t repeat the past."
>
> "Can’t repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"
>
> He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.
>
> "I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said, nodding determinedly. "She’ll see."

p. 110 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/fscott-fitzgerald/the-great-gatsby/i-wouldnt-ask.md)