Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….And one fine morning —

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

I’ve been under some pretty extreme duress this week, and last night I decided to re-read the Great Gatsby. It ties with Huckleberry Finn as the greatest American novel because between the two of them, it’s possible to understand absolutely everything about America. There’s something wonderful about reading the books of the past and realizing that the problems are still the same, because it means that if we survived them then, then we can survive them now.

It gives you hope for your own life and your own future, in an unexpected sense. Things may not get any better. But they never have been.