“I’ve often thought that if I hadn’t got what I wanted things might have been different with me. I might have found something in my mind and enjoyed putting it in circulation. I might have been content with the work of it, and had some sweet vanity out of the success. I suppose that at one time I could have had anything I wanted, within reason, but that was the only thing I ever wanted with any fervor. God! And that taught me you can’t have anything, you can’t have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It’s like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it — but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you’ve got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone —”
— The Beautiful and the Damned (p. 341)
Fitzgerald said that his material was taken from his life. Each character has some of himself, and we see autobiographical truths spring up in each of his novels. Here, the protagonist Anthony Patch, is talking to a woman with whom he had an affair.
We as humans have an innate drive towards competition and success. This can intertwine with intimate interaction; what is the motivation for your desire of another person? At a very early age, Fitzgerald felt pressure towards societal success. In the Beautiful and the Damned, Anthony marries Gloria, mainly for her beauty. The two lack a connection and look for fulfillment in a lavish lifestyle, attempting to fight away an ever-creeping emptiness.
This quotation can be interpreted in different ways to each reader depending upon their motivation for success, and how they measure that success.
