Please, no more 'second acts'

What's the most overused quote in all of American literature?

My vote goes to Scott Fitzgerald for "There are no second acts in American lives." In the past week, I've run across it in a news story, a magazine story, online and in a TV news report. If the quote wasn't so cheap and vacuous, I wouldn't complain, but Fitzgerald was a much better writer -- and I wonder how many of the reporters who endlessly recycle that line even know he's the author of "The Great Gatsby"?

Funny thing is, you have to work at it to find the source for the quote. Apparently it was in Fitzgerald's working notes for "The Last Tycoon," the novel he left unfinished at his death in 1940. (Might be in the newly published draft version, "The Love of the Last Tycoon"?)

Comments

[Lilah Larson]

Perhaps if you didn't watch so much TV or focussed more on reading things that weren't written last week your task of not seeing quotes such as these wouldn't be so arduous....just a thought...later

[Ryan]

Can we also see the end of "pain at the pump?"

Or how about "grim milestone?"