Quotes from Margaret Mitchell

I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'll never understand or forgive myself. And if a bullet gets me, so help me, I'll laugh at myself for being an idiot. There's one thing I do know... and that is that I love you, Scarlett. In spite of you and me and the whole silly world going to pieces around us, I love you. Because we're alike. Bad lots, both of us. Selfish and shrewd. But able to look things in the eyes as we call them by their right names.

God help the man who ever really loves you.

Once, when she was six years old, she had fallen from a tree, flat on her stomach. She could still recall that sickening interval before breath came back into her body. Now, as she looked at him, she felt the same way she had felt then, breathless, stunned, nauseated.

Yes, I want money more than anything else in the world." "Then you've made the only choice. But there's a penalty attached, as there is to most things you want. It's loneliness.

She hasn't your strength. She's never had any strength. She's never had anything but heart.

You're like the thief who isn't the least bit sorry he stole, but is terribly, terribly sorry he's going to jail. - Rhett Butler

Her burdens were her own and burdens were for shoulders strong enough to bear them.

She could see so clearly now that he was only a childish fancy, no more important really than her spoiled desire for the aquamarine earbobs she had coaxed out of Gerald. For, once she owned the earbobs, they had lost their value, as everything except money lost its value once it was hers.

She could not ignore life. She had to live it and it was too brutal, too hostile, for her even to try to gloss over its harshness with a smile.

The whole world can't lick us but we can lick ourselves by longing too hard for things we haven't got any more - and by remembering too much.

Like most girls, her imagination carried her just as far as the altar and no further.

What's broken is broken—and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I live…I'm too old to believe in such sentimentalities as clean slates and starting all over.

There'll always be wars because men love wars. Women don't, but men do..

Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battlefield when it's be brave or else be killed.

Do I understand, sir, that you mean the Cause for which our heroes have died is not sacred?' If you were run over by a railroad train your death wouldn't sanctify the railroad company, would it?' asked Rhett and his voice sounded as if he were humbly seeking information.

All she wanted was a breathing space in which to hurt.

In the end what will happen will be what has happened whenever a civilization breaks up. The people who have brains and courage come through and the ones who haven't are winnowed out.

Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.

I'm tempting you with fine gifts until your girlish ideals are quite worn away and you are at my mercy.

The way to get a man interested and to hold his interest was to talk about himself, and then gradually lead the conversation around yourself—and keep it there.

I can't go all my life waiting to catch you between husbands.

But, hell, I wouldn't have grudged him your body. I know how little bodies mean - especially women's bodies. But I do grudge him your heart and your dear, hard, unscrupulous mind. He doesn't want your mind, the fool, and I don't want your body. I can buy women cheap. But I do want your mind and your heart, and I'll never have them.

I was right when I said I'd never look back. It hurts too much, it drags at your heart till you can't ever do anything else except look back.

They were always like two people talking to each other in different languages. But she loved him so much, when he withdrew as he had now done, it was like the warm sun going down and leaving her in chilly twilight dews.