'It is in the 30s that we want friends. In the 40s we know they won't save us any more than love did.' -F. Scott Fitzgerald
This is a confident, if rather depressing, sentiment about the human experience in our 30s and 40s from a man who didn't live to see his own 45th birthday. At his funeral, Fitzgerald's contemporary Dorothy Parker is alleged to uttered, "the poor son of a bitch," alluding to Jay Gatsby's own funeral in Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby.