Quote 10
He hadn't once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs. (5.112)
We've all been there, right? (Or we can imagine it.) Your crush finally agrees to go out with you, and somehow everything is different. The whole world seems to disappear, and it's just the two of you prancing through fields and ignoring the imminent destruction of the universe.
Quote 11
"It was a strange coincidence," I said.
"But it wasn't a coincidence at all."
"Why not?"
"Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay." (4.137-140)
This is the rich-people equivalent of getting your contact in the office to rearrange the lockers so you can be near your crush. Not so much coincidence as, yep, creepy and stalker-ish. Or beautifully romantic. Your pick.
Quote 12
The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on to-day. (1.5)
Nick self-deprecatingly punctures the illusion that his family comes from nobility—but instead, he makes himself into another kind of nobility: a family that actually has achieved the American Dream of wealth and respectability through hard work.