Quotes by Margaret Mitchell

I wish to Heaven I was married, she said resentfully as she attacked the yams with loathing. Im tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do. Im tired of acting like I dont eat more than a bird, and walking when I want to run and saying I feel faint after a waltz, when I could dance for two days and never get tired. Im tired of saying, How wonderful you are! to fool men who havent got one-half the sense Ive got, and Im tired of pretending I dont know anything, so men can tell me things and feel important while theyre doing it... I cant eat another bite.

It was not often that she was alone like this and she did not like it. When she was alone she had to think and, these days, thoughts were not so pleasant.

Vanity was stronger than love at sixteen and there was no room in her hot heart now for anything but hate.

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

He knew that she took life as it came, opposed her tough-fibered mind to whatever obstacles there might be, fought on with a determination that would not recognize defeat, and kept on fighting even when she saw defeat was inevitable.

But there was a difference in their hardness and hers and just what the difference was, she could not, for the moment, tell. Perhaps it was that there was nothing she would not do, and there were so many things these people would rather die than do. Perhaps it was that they were without hope but still smiling at life, bowing gracefully and passing it by. And this Scarlett could not do. 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. Of the sweetness and courage and unyielding pride of her friends, Scarlett saw nothing. She saw only a silly stiff-neckedness which observed facts but smiled and refused to look them in the face.

Id cut up my heart for you to wear if you wanted it.

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.

You should be kissed and by someone who knows how.

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 its be brave or else be killed.

To Scarlett, there was something breath-taking about Ellen OHara, a miracle that lived in the house with her and awed her and charmed and soothed her.

Oh - a diamond ring - and Rhett, do buy a great big one!

Somewhere, on the long road that wound through those four years, the girl with her sachet & dancing slippers had slipped away & there was left a woman with sharp green eyes, who counted pennies & turned her hands to many menial tasks, a woman to whom nothing was left from the wreckage except the indestructible red earth on which she stood.

I stood there in the doorway before you saw me and I watched you, he said.And I watched the other girls. And they all looked as though their faces came out of one mold. Yours didn’t.

Scarlett OHara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin - that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.

Jeems was their body servant and, like the dogs, accompanied them everywhere. He had been their childhood playmate and had been given to the twins for their own on their tenth birthday.

you can go to the Devil and not at your leisure. You can go now, for all I care.My pet, Ive been to the Devil and hes a very dull fellow. I wont go there again, not even for you.

If Gone With the Wind has a theme it is that of survival. What makes some people come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong, and brave, go under? It happens in every upheaval. Some people survive; others dont. What qualities are in those who fight their way through triumphantly that are lacking in those that go under? I only know that survivors used to call that quality gumption. So I wrote about people who had gumption and people who didnt.

If I said I was madly in love with you youd know I was lying.

The whole world cant lick us but we can lick ourselves by longing too hard for things we havent got any more - and by remembering too much.