Quotes from Margaret Mitchell

The way to get a man interested and to hold his interest was to talk about him, and then gradually lead the conversation around to yourself-and keep it there. Scarlett would have felt some cause for alarm if Melanie had been saying: How wonderful you are!! or How do you ever think of such things? My little ole brain would bust if I even tried to think about them! But here she was, with a man at her feet, talking as seriously as if she were in church.

stick-in-themuddish

in his finger, and the woman muffled the moans of childbirth, lest she disturb him.

So, from the cradle to the grave, women strove to make men pleased with themselves, and the satisfied men repaid lavishly with gallantry and adoration. In fact, men willingly gave the ladies everything in the world except credit for having intelligence.

Captain Butler, you must not hold me so tightly. Everybody is looking. If no one were looking, would you care?

Tara made her charming, but the war made her Scarlett O'Hara.

She'd make them sorry. She'd show them. She didn't quite see how she'd show them, but she'd do it all the same. She'd hurt them worse than they hurt her.

Well, she was right, as far as she knew. But, Scarlett, did it ever occur to you that even the most deathless love could wear out?

It was a man's world, and she accepted it as such. The man owned the property, and the woman managed it. The man took the credit for the management, and the woman praised his cleverness. The man roared like a bull when a splinter was in his finger, and the woman muffled the moans of childbirth, lest she disturb him.

Sir, she said, you are no gentleman! An apt observation, he answered airily. And you, Miss, are no lady.

His one great flaw was making the terrible and exhilarating mistake of falling in love with Scarlett O'Hara.

With the spirit of her people who would not know defeat, even when it stared them in the face, she raised her chin. She could get Rhett back. She knew she could. There had never been a man she couldn't get, once she set her mind upon him. "I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.

locale and point of focus and heroine. She leaves the great battlefields of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Bull Run and Antietam to the others and places the Civil War in the middle of Scarlett O'Hara's living room. She has the Northern cannons sounding beyond Peachtree Creek as Melanie Wilkes goes into labor, and has the city of Atlanta in flames as Scarlett is seized with an

I'm so sorry but I have a headache." How odd that her voice sounded natural! Thank God for the dark! "I don't believe I'll go. You go, Rhett, and give Melanie my regrets." There was a long pause and he spoke drawlingly, bitingly in the dark. "What a white livered, cowardly little bitch you are.

My pet, I've been to the devil and he's a very dull fellow.

She was a woman now and youth was gone.

Why, she had never had to do a thing for herself in all her life. There had always been someone to do things for her, to look after her, shelter and protect her and spoil her. It was incredible that she could be in such a fix. Not a friend, not a neighbor to help her. There had always been friends, neighbors, the competent hands of willing slaves. And now in this hour of greatest need, there was no one. It was incredible that she could be so completely alone, and frightened, and far from home.

Always providing you have enough courage—or money—you can do without a reputation. Money can't buy everything. Someone must have told you that. You'd never think of such a platitude all by yourself. What can't it buy? Oh, well, I don't know—not happiness or love, anyway. Generally it can. And when it can't, it can buy some of the most remarkable substitutes.

All had suffered crushing misfortunes and had not been crushed. They had not been broken by the crash of empires, the machetes of revolting slaves, war, rebellion, proscription, confiscation. Malign fate had broken their necks, perhaps, but never their hearts. They had not whined, they had

Pretty young Mrs. Hamilton, with her dimple and her jingling earbobs and her helpless little ways, blowing a man's face to a pulp and then burying him in a hastily scratched-out hole!

And these children will never talk of anything else either. They'll think it was wonderful and glorious to fight the Yankees and come home blind and crippled—or not come home at all. They all like to remember the war, to talk about it. But I don't. I don't even like to think about it. I'd forget it all if I could—oh, if I only could!

She listened with flesh crawling as Melanie told tales of Tara, making Scarlett a heroine as she faced the invaders and saved Charles' sword, bragging how Scarlett had put out the fire. Scarlett took no pleasure or pride in the memory of these things. She did not want to think of them at all.

a woman not to be afraid of something.

I made a pretty suit of clothes and fell in love with it. And when Ashley came riding along, so handsome, so different, I put that suit on him and made him wear it whether it fitted him or not. And I wouldn't see what he really was. I kept on loving the pretty clothes—and not him at all.