Jazz Age Quotes

“The best of humanity's recorded history is a creative balance between horrors endured and victories achieved, and so it was during the Harlem Renaissance.”
― Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry

“We couldn't go on indefinitely being swept off our feet.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“In April war was declared with Germany. Wilson and his cabinet—a cabinet that in its lack of distinction was strangely reminiscent of the twelve apostles—let loose the carefully starved dogs of war, and the press began to whoop hysterically against the sinister morals, sinister philosophy, and sinister music produced by the Teutonic temperament. Those who fancied themselves particularly broad-minded made the exquisite distinction that it was only the German Government which aroused them to hysteria; the rest were worked up to a condition of retching indecency. Any song which contained the word "mother" and the word "kaiser" was assured of a tremendous success. At last every one had something to talk about—and almost every one fully enjoyed it, as though they had been cast for parts in a sombre and romantic play.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“It was late morning when he woke and found the telephone beside his bed in the hotel tolling frantically, and remembered that he had left word to be called at eleven. Sloane was snoring heavily, his clothes in a pile by his bed. They dressed and ate breakfast in silence, and then sauntered out to get some air. Amory's mind was working slowly, trying to assimilate what had happened and separate from the chaotic imagery that stacked his memory the bare shreds of truth. If the morning had been cold and gray he could have grasped the reins of the past in an instant, but it was one of those days that New York gets sometimes in May, when the air of Fifth Avenue is a soft, light wine. How much or how little Sloane remembered Amory did not care to know; he apparently had none of the nervous tension that was gripping Amory and forcing his mind back and forth like a shrieking saw.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“We are drawn to the Renaissance because of the hope for black uplift and interracial empathy that it embodied and because there is a certain element of romanticism associated with the era’s creativity, its seemingly larger than life heroes and heroines, and its most brilliantly lit terrain, Harlem, USA.”
― Clement Alexander Price, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance

“It really was a whole generation who were listening to Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins, James Moody, Fats Navarro and, a little bit later on, Mongo Santamaría and Chuck Berry, and these dozen or so guys gave them a voice. They led the way. They wrote what a whole generation wanted to read. The time was right and they seized the day by writing about their lives. They travelled, they got into scrapes, they got arrested, they got wasted … and they wrote about it.

Isn’t that something?”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“A ideia de que ele poderia representar dois papéis tão distintos com duas pessoas diferentes intrigava-a de uma forma desconcertante. Seria ela o vício obsessivo de alguém que não conseguia lidar com a sua sexualidade? Seria ela a satisfação demente do desejo, a expressão do dissoluto? Seria ele um ator quase tão natural quanto ela? Quem é que estava ali a enganar quem? “Tenho a minha fala!” - pensou e, ainda que fosse descontextualizada e o som ininterrupto do telefone se fizesse ouvir, ela proferiu-a só para que fosse verbalizada, o drama da personagem que já não se deixava ouvir, a quem o tempo destruíra o protagonismo.
- Encontro-te lá.
Conduzida pelo magnetismo secreto dos seus olhos, olhou-se ao espelho e achou-se harmoniosa. Viu um brilho determinado nos olhos, que poderia ser só do gin, mas ela identificou-o e apercebeu-se, pela primeira vez, que todo o quarto cheirava a fumo de tabaco e que aquele não era um dia com muito sol, era um dia ideal para ficar deitada, a ler, a beber e a fumar. Sabia que não devia sair e que parte dela queria ficar mas, às vezes, no que toca ao amor, parece que não aprendemos nada com o passar dos anos.”
― Pat R

“She clicked open the door and glided into the back seat like a summer breeze through an open window on the highway. "Where are you heading?", His Southern twang reminded her of home, but her eyes showed him no familiarity. She stared at him, void of expression, her thoughts racing. "Miss?", he persisted. "Anywhere. Please. Just drive.", she replied tersely, not sure if she even wanted her mind to join her in the back seat. The driver stared into her eyes and somehow understood, he started the engine and on they went. Two strangers, a blur of yellow, in pursuit of nowhere.”
― RJ Arkhipov

“Someone has to unbutton the stuffed shirts of the beau monde.”
― Pamela Hamilton, Lady Be Good: The Life and Times of Dorothy Hale

“The rest of us have to play along with God’s little game of Russian roulette, His eternal lesson to live it up while you can. And far be it for me to turn away from God—let’s get a drink.”
― Pamela L Hamilton, Lady Be Good Lib/E: The Life and Times of Dorothy Hale

“Jazz as Herman has come to it is part of the big come-on. Get ‘em in and get ‘em loaded. Get ‘em loaded and get ‘em laid. Get ‘em laid and get ‘em out. And all the while the band made noise, laid down the beat. When you got laid, you jazzed your girl, but you didn’t want to the hit the street with jazz still on our pants… and, what the hell, jazz is jazz… and the dance floor and the tables, too, completely filled and the temperature going up and up, the faces of the dancers shining with sweat and excitement. Because they’ve surrendered as well, all of them, the booze beginning to take hold, its toxic contents roaring through their veins, mounting into the heads topped with brilliantined hair or bobbed, the girls’ cheeks flushed like rose petals and the flush creeping down their swanlike necks, past the strings of paste that for tonight are agreed to be the real thing.”
― Frederick Turner

“Jazz as Herman has come to know it is part of the big come-on. Get ‘em in and get ‘em loaded. Get ‘em loaded and get ‘em laid. Get ‘em laid and get ‘em out. And all the while the band made noise, laid down the beat. When you got laid, you jazzed your girl, but you didn’t want to the hit the street with jazz still on our pants… and, what the hell, jazz is jazz… and the dance floor and the tables, too, completely filled and the temperature going up and up, the faces of the dancers shining with sweat and excitement. Because they’ve surrendered as well, all of them, the booze beginning to take hold, its toxic contents roaring through their veins, mounting into the heads topped with brilliantined hair or bobbed, the girls’ cheeks flushed like rose petals and the flush creeping down their swanlike necks, past the strings of paste that for tonight are agreed to be the real thing.”
― Frederick Turner, 1929

“it somehow felt dissociating. A world in which I did not belong to, or could never belong to. Parties, as if it was 1920, transpired days and nights, spent in the bliss of alcohol, self-indulgence, sex and drug abuse. As if we humans were whores addicted to the ignorance and bliss of nothingness that drugs, sex and alcohol brought about. A never-ending freedom in which we could always come back to if we needed to. Luxurious, the life of the rich.”
― W.M Angel, Atlas Loved

“We were in an age of broken dreams, and destroyed idealism. To see performances was to watch death's hand slowly moving away from the face of his victims -- their souls taken away through the chords of instrumentation and voice. Musicians, reapers made into humans, deceiving others to follow them through reaching others hearts with their musical craftsmanship. Writers, the thieves of the dreaming stow-aways of society. Painters, the men and women who depict the very essence of what they see as our world, and the thieves of hearts. And then, we have the singers: The devil’s voice that could lead masses into battle, with the essence of an angel. Sadly, our worlds weren’t much different.”
― W.M Angel, Atlas Loved

“And what else is one to do when presented so unexpectedly with such stupefying intrigue but continue turning the pages back in time, a time when a wave of excess carried the American aristocracy and titled Europeans to grand ships and grander estates for extravagant parties never before seen and never seen thereafter. They stumbled onto the laps of married lovers, champagne spilling onto polished marble floors, betrayal and indecency dressed up in custom-made suits and an air of refinement honed since birth. This was the Jazz Age. The Crazy Years. Les Années Folles, as she often said.”
― Pamela Hamilton, Lady Be Good: The Life and Times of Dorothy Hale

“Someone has to unbutton the stuffed shirts of the beau monde.”
― Pamela L Hamilton, Lady Be Good Lib/E: The Life and Times of Dorothy Hale

“The word jazz in its progress toward respectability has meant first sex, then dancing then music. It is associated with a state of nervous stimulation, not unlike that of big citiesbehind the lines of a war.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Echoes of the Jazz Age: Short Story