Quotes from Margaret Mitchell

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.

Bright lights and wine, fiddles and dancing, brocade and broadcloth in the showy big houses and, just around the corners, slow starvation and cold. Arrogance and callousness for the conquerors, bitter endurance and hatred for the conquered.

No one seemed to realize what really possessed her, what drove her like a mad woman. It was a passion to get her affairs in order before she had to retire behind doors, to have as much money as possible in case the deluge broke upon her again, to have a stout levee of cash against the rising tide of Yankee hate. Money was the obsession dominating her mind these days. When she thought of the baby at all, it was with baffled rage at the untimeliness of it.

She spoke in the soft slurring voice of the coastal Georgian, liquid of vowels, kind to consonants and with the barest trace of French accent. It was a voice never raised in command to a servant or reproof to a child but a voice that was obeyed instantly at Tara, where her husband's blustering and roaring were quietly disregarded.

What most people don't seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one.

God's nightgown!" said Scarlett to herself in indignation, using Gerald's favorite oath. "He looks as if—as if he knew what I looked like without my shimmy," and, tossing her head, she went up the steps. In the

He was excited by the war fever and pleased that Scarlett had made so good a match, and who was he to stand in the way of young love when there was a war? Ellen, distracted, finally gave in as other mothers throughout the South were doing. Their leisured world had been turned topsy-turvy, and their pleadings, prayers and advice availed nothing against the powerful forces sweeping them along.

You know she said I was going to marry a gentleman with jet-black hair and a long black mustache, and I don't like black-haired gentlemen.

Somehow she found that she was sitting on the low velvet chair and Ashley, on the hassock at her feet, was holding both her hands in his, in a hard grip. He was saying things—things that made no sense. Her mind was quite blank, quite empty of all the thoughts that had surged through it only a moment before, and his words made no more impression than rain on glass. They fell on unhearing ears, words that were swift and tender and full of pity, like a father speaking to a hurt child.

Life was never more real to me than a shadow show on a curtain. And I preferred it so. I did not like the outlines of things to be too sharp. I like them gently blurred, a little hazy…

Una famiglia deve, per poter sopravvivere, presentare al mondo un fronte compatto.

She heard the soft muffled sound of his footsteps dying away down the long hall, and the complete enormity of her actions came over her. She had lost him forever. Now he would hate her and every time he looked at her he would remember how she threw herself at him when he had given her no encouragement at all.

Peace had failed her and Ashley had failed her, both in the same day, and it was as if the last crevice in the shell had been sealed, the final layer hardened. She had become what Grandma Fontaine had counseled against, a woman who had seen the worst and so had nothing else to fear. Not life nor Mother nor loss of love nor public opinion. Only hunger and her nightmare dream of hunger could make her afraid.

She was constitutionally unable to endure any man being in love with any woman not herself

and jealous of each other about that two-faced, little, green-eyed baggage

But if true love carries any weight with you, you can be certain Miss Suellen will be rich in that if nothing else.

La vita di Elena non era facile né felice, ma lei non si era aspettata che fosse facile e, quanto alla felicità, quello era il destino della donna. Il mondo era degli uomini, e lei lo accettava. L'uomo era lodato per l'ordine della sua proprietà e la donna lodava la sua abilità. L'uomo muggiva come un toro se una scheggia gli si conficcava in un dito e la donna soffocava i gemiti quando metteva al mondo un figlio, per timore di disturbarlo.

But Gerald has known poverty, and he could never learn to lose money with good humor or good grace.

without knowing why, she found it comforting to be in his presence.

As usual in the very young, she marveled that people could be so selfishly oblivious to her pain and the world rock along just the same, in spite of her heartbreak.

When Scarlett was seeing Rhett to the door, she asked indignantly: "If it were you, wouldn't you enlist with the Yankees to keep from dying in that place and then desert?" "Of course," said Rhett, his teeth showing beneath his mustache. "Then why didn't Ashley do it?" "He's a gentleman," said Rhett, and Scarlett wondered how it was possible to convey such cynicism and contempt in that one honorable word.

But she felt that if Ashley succumbed to premeditated feminine tricks, she could never respect him as she now did. Any man who was fool enough to fall for a simper, a faint and an 'oh, how wonderful you are!' wasn't worth having.

My news is this, he answered, grinning down at her. I still want you more than any woman I've ever seen and now that Frank's gone, I thought you'd be interested to know it.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn