Quotes from Margaret Mitchell

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. -Rhett Butler

She raised her chin and her pale, black-fringed eyes sparkled in the moonlight. Ellen had never told her that desire and attainment were two different matters; life had not taught her that the race was not to the swift. She lay in the silvery shadows with courage rising and made the plans that a sixteen-year-old makes when life has been so pleasant that defeat is an impossibility and a pretty dress and a clear complexion are weapons to vanquish fate.

You are a child if you thought I didn't know, for all your smothering yourself under that hot lap robe. Of course, I knew. Why else do you think I've been—" He stopped suddenly and a silence fell between them. He picked up the reins and clucked to the horse.

Out of the welter of rapture and anger and heartbreak and hurt pride that he had left, depression emerged to sit upon her shoulder like a carrion crow.

I love you, Scarlett, because we are so much alike, renegades, both of us, dear, and selfish rascals. Neither of us cares a rap if the whole world goes to pot, so long as we are safe and comfortable.

Most of the misery of the world has been caused by wars. And when the wars were over, no one ever knew what they were all about.

Scarlett, when you are forty-five, perhaps you will know what I'm talking about and then perhaps you, too, will be tired of imitation gentry and shoddy manners and cheap emotions. But I doubt it. I think you'll always be more attracted by glister than by gold.

For Ashley was born of a line of men who used their leisure for thinking, not doing, for spinning brightly colored dreams that had in them no touch of reality... He looked on people, and he neither liked nor disliked them. He looked on life and was neither heartened nor saddened. He accepted the universe and his place in it for what they were and, shrugging, turned to his music and books and his better world.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn! (Rhett Butler)

I've done murder and so I can surely do this.

He never really existed at all, except in my imagination, she thought wearily. I loved something that I made up...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.

Don't be a goose!

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 wasn't going to sit down and patiently wait for a miracle to help her. She was going to rush into life and wrest from it what she could.

And don't think you can lay down the load, ever. Because you can't. I know.

Scarlett kicked the coverlet in impotent rage, trying to think of something bad enough to say. 'God's nightgown!' she cried at last, and felt somewhat relieved.

So you'll have to wait for approval from your grandchildren." "I wonder what our grandchildren will be like!" "Are you suggesting by that 'our' that you and I will have mutual grandchildren? Fie, Mrs. Kennedy!

I want peace. I want to see if somewhere there isn't something left in life of charm and grace.

It's a curse—this not wanting to look on naked realities. Until the war, 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... In other words, Scarlett, I am a coward.

Why be an ostrich?

what will the South be like without all our fine boys? What would the South have been if they had lived?

I love you...I've always loved you. I've never loved anybody else. I just married Charlie to - to try to hurt you. Oh, Ashley, I love you so much I'd walk every step of the way to Virginia just to be near you! And I'd cook for you and polish your boots and groom your horse - Ashley, say you love me! I'll live on it for the rest of my life!

And if we folks have a motto, it's this: 'Don't holler — smile and bide your time.' We've survived a passel of things that way, smiling and biding our time, and we've gotten to be experts at surviving.

He was so very large and male, and excessively male creatures always discomposed her.