“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” F. Scott Fitzgerald

Today, September 24, is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthday. Born in 1896, he lived through some of the most tumultuous decades in American history and his writing reflected this reality. Probably best known for “The Great Gatsby,” he’s considered both a great novelist and short-story writer. Some of his words of wisdom:

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

“Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.”

“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”

“Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.”

“At eighteen our convictions are hills form which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.”

“In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.”

“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.”

“I like people and I like people to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside.”

“Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.”

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be whistling or only humming.”

“To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.”

“My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterwards.”

“Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.”

“The victor belongs to the spoils.”

“Action is character.”

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