The world only exists in your eyes... You can make it as big or as small as you want.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
This line, taken from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1936 essay “The Crack-Up,” is spoken by an unnamed woman who appears near the end of the piece. For most of the essay, Fitzgerald paints a remorseful picture of himself as a man of little consequence, but then a mysterious woman shows up and tells him, “Listen!” She implores Fitzgerald to snap out of it, to see his own agency, and to understand that he can make his life as big or as small as he wants.
