Love Quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald turns a seemingly sociable confession into a small act of self-defense. The opening clause sounds like a handshake: he likes people, he likes approval. Then he undercuts the performance with a pivot that’s pure Fitzgeraldian self-awareness: the desire to be liked is real, but it’s also dangerous. “I wear my heart where God put it” borrows the familiar idiom about wearing your heart on your sleeve and snaps it back into place. The joke is gentler than Wilde, but the move is just as precise: he’s admitting to vulnerability while insisting on boundaries.

The “God” line is doing extra work. It frames emotional restraint not as coldness or calculation, but as something almost ordained, a temperament with moral cover. That matters for Fitzgerald, a writer obsessed with the social marketplace - who gets invited, who gets forgiven, who gets to be “charming” without being consumed by it. In Jazz Age culture, likability is currency, and currency always comes with fraud risk. He’s signaling fluency in the rules of charm while warning that he won’t pay with his actual insides.

Subtextually, it’s also a quiet rebuke to the romantic myth he helped popularize: that sincerity should be worn publicly, that feeling is proof. Fitzgerald knows the cost of that myth. This line reads like a man who’s been misread, overdrawn, and still wants company - just not at the price of emotional exhibitionism.