It's all about first impressions.

If personality is a series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away.

With all of the hype surrounding the release of Baz Lurhman's film of The Great Gatsby you might feel like there's no need to read the book, but there are many good reasons why it has been called the greatest American novel.

And grandiosity.

The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens - finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of it's run.

The main reason to read,or even re-read The Great Gatsby before you see the film is Fitzgerald's beautiful prose, which cannot be transcribed to film.

Inscrutable beauty.

He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four of five times in life. It faced - or seemed to face - the whole world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favour. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

Unlike anything else on my shelves, I read The Great Gatsby over and over. The impulse to pick it up is governed by the knowledge that I will wholeheartedly enjoy it and I'm reminded of what a beautiful and romantic book it is.

Excitement.

There was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen", a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

And smouldering ambition.

This is a valley of ashes - a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke, and finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.

Here's a few of my favourite examples, chosen from so many fabulous passages so as not to give away any of the plot. Resist if you can.