Jay Gatsby makes this response to Nick Carraway’s statement, “You can’t repeat the past.” Their conversation occurs after Daisy and Tom Buchanan have left a party at Gatsby’s house. It is the first one they have attended, and Gatsby can tell that Daisy did not like it. Nick is encouraging him to realize that he is asking a lot of Daisy. Gatsby is incredulous in part because of what Nick says, and in part because he had thought Nick was entirely on his wavelength in his plan to rekindle Daisy’s love.
Gatsby does not want to repeat the entire past, only select moments of the past. He wants to believe he can pick and choose the best fragments of his shattered past and in doing so block out the unpleasant ones. Rather than the horrors of war, for example, he remembers the months he spent at Oxford. The focus of this selective reinvention is Daisy. While she has been his ideal, the corporeal aspect of their relationship centered on a single perfect kiss. The build up to that kiss has created an idyllic vision in his mind. It remains unfocused in his mind that it is part of himself that he is trying to recover. Nick says, “He wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.”
What Gatsby does not—or will not, or cannot—understand is that it was that anticipation and that hint of physical contact that made the moment so perfect for both of them. He tries to convince himself that he, Daisy, and Tom can meet socially as a way to get closer to her. The effect, of course, is to make her nervous and Tom jealous. His next step will be to stop socializing and have Daisy come to his house alone.
This is an important quote. Gatsby says this to Nick as he is reuniting with Daisy for the first time in five years. Gatsby's whole life since they parted has revolved around seeing her again and starting over. He is emotionally invested in the idea that he can turn back the clock and rekindle his relationship with her as if the past five years never happened.
Nick tries to warn him that this can't be done. Gatsby's response shows that he completely rejects Nick's commonsense warning.
Gatsby's tragedy is that he can't accept that the passage of time changes circumstances. Daisy has a husband and child. She is not the person she was five years ago. Nevertheless, Gatsby, as the quote shows, persists in believing he can will a moment from the past back into being and bring it into the present. He is living in a fantasy, but the fantasy has become so important to him that he can't give it up.
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