Daisy's cynical outburst occurs in Chapter I as she talks to Nick about her life since her marriage, telling him that she had had "a very bad time" and that she was "pretty cynical about everything." She describes the birth of her daughter and follows that sad recitation by telling Nick that she thinks "everything's terrible anyhow." After explaining that she has "been everywhere and seen everything and done everything," she concludes somewhat defiantly by declaring, "Sophisticated--God, I'm sophisticated!"
Nick's reaction, his assessment that Daisy's words constitute a performance on her part rather than an honest expression of feeling, follows immediately in the text:
The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to extract a contributary emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
In these three sentences, Nick identifies Daisy's basic insincerity and her flair for drama.
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