The wall behind me in high school english

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…"

Sometimes, lying in bed at night, I think of this - how unmistakably AMERICAN Fitzgerald made it seem to smash people up. How sexy he made vast carelessnness with just this one line.

Funny how certain things resonate - how sometimes high school English can leave lasting peculiarities of preference on one's sensibilities. I die in empathetic mortification for people who don't know their Greek Tragedy - those poor souls who can't quite keep track of their Antigones and Iphigenias. And, that quote. It just rings in my ears at the strangest times. I remember it printed in this overly prettified handwriting, on a bubble of orange contruction paper tacked up to a temporary wall. Four years running.