Quotes from Margaret Mitchell

Child, it's a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen

With the introduction of Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, Miss Mitchell managed to create the two most famous lovers in the English-speaking world since Romeo and Juliet. Scarlett springs alive in the first sentence of the book and holds the narrative center for over a thousand pages. She is a fabulous, pixilated, one-of-a-kind creation, and she does not utter a dull line in the entire book.

Influence is everything, and guilt or innocence merely an academic question.

She married Frank Kennedy two weeks later after a whirlwind courtship which she blushingly told him left her too breathless to oppose his ardor any longer.

Indeed! he said coolly. Well, who's the happy father? Ashley?

Why does a girl have to be so silly to catch a husband?

She felt little affection for the child, hide the fact though she might.

SCARLETT'S CHILD WAS A GIRL, a small bald-headed mite, ugly as a hairless monkey and absurdly like Frank.

A hard little pain had started in her heart and was traveling slowly up toward her throat where it would become a lump and the lump would soon become tears.

war and politics and thought them masculine matters about which no lady could intelligently concern herself. But it gave Gerald pleasure to air his views, and Ellen was unfailingly thoughtful of her husband's pleasure.

had awakened no idea of what passion might be or tenderness or true intimacy of body or spirit.

Give me a good horse to ride and some good licker to drink and a good girl to court and a bad girl to have fun with and anybody can have their own Europe.... What do we care about missing the tour?

If the people who started wars didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight?

Life was going past her, down a hot shady summer road, life with gray uniforms and jingling spurs and flowered organdie dresses and banjos playing.

Ah's sceered of cows, Miss Scarlett. Ah ain' nebber had nuthin' ter do wid cows. Ah ain' no yard nigger. Ah's a house nigger." "You're a fool nigger, and the worst day's work Pa ever did was to buy you," said Scarlett slowly, too tired for anger. "And if I ever get the use of my arm again, I'll wear this whip out on you.

This is war time. We can't think of the proprieties now.

she could recall nothing about Charles except the dying-calf look on his face when she told him she would marry him.

El Sur producía hombres de Estado y soldados, plantadores y doctores, abogados y poetas, pero no ingenieros ni mecánicos. Estas profesiones vulgares eran buenas para los yanquis.

Longing hearts could only stand so much of longing.

When such thoughts came she did not pray hastily to God, telling Him she did not mean it. God did not frighten her any more.

Be a little man, Wade, and stop crying or I will come over there and slap you.

Nothing but my devotion to you would make me, at this stage of my career, turn horse thief—and thief of such a horse. Let me help you in.

Why, why, her mind stuttered, I believe women could manage everything in the world without men's help--except having babies, and God knows, no woman in her right mind would have babies if she could help it.

She could never love anything or anyone so selflessly as they did. What a lonely feeling it was—and she had never been lonely in either body or spirit before.