Margaret Mitchell
My age is my own private business and I intend to keep it so - if I can. I am not so old that I am ashamed of my age and I am not so young that I couldn't have written my book and that is all the public needs to know about my age.Collection: Book
All you have done is to be different from other women and you have made a little success of it. This is unforgivable sin in any society. The mere fact that you have succeed to run the mill is an insult to everyman who hasn't succeed.Collection: Running
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.Collection: Loneliness
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.Collection: Selfish
Scarlett's mind went back through the years to the still hot noon at Tara when grey smoke curled above a blue-clad body and Melanie stood at the top of the stairs with Charles' sabre in her hand. Scarlett remembered that she had thought at the time: 'How silly! Melly couldn't even heft that sword!' But now she knew that had the necessity arisen, Melanie would have charged down those stairs and killed the Yankee - or been killed herself.Collection: Silly
Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless.Collection: Selfish
Suddenly she felt strong and happy. She was not afraid of the darkness or the fog and she knew with a singing in her heart that she would never fear them again. No matter what mists might curl around her in the future, she knew her refuge. She started briskly up the street toward home and the blocks seemed very long. Far, far too long. She caught up her skirts to her knees and began to run lightly. But this time she was not running from fear. She was running because Rhett's arms were at the end of the street.Collection: Running
Forgive me for startling you with the impetuosity of my sentiments, my dear Scarlett—I mean, my dear Mrs. Kennedy. It cannot have escaped your notice that for some time past the friendship I have had in my heart for you has ripened into a deeper feeling, a feeling more beautiful, more pure, more sacred. Dare I name it you? Ah! It is love which makes me so bold!Collection: Beautiful
Perhaps - I want the old days back again and they'll never come back, and I am haunted by the memory of them and of the world falling about my ears.Collection: Memories
I won't need you to rescue meM. I can take care of myself, thank you. - Scarlett O'Hara.Collection: Needs
I loved something I made upCollection: Made
She is the only dream I ever had that lived and breathed and did not die in the face of reality." (Ashley said about Melanie)Collection: Dream
I don't see how it could possibly be made into a movie unless the entire book was scrapped and Shirley Temple cast as 'Bonnie,' Mae West as 'Belle,' and Stepin Fetchit as 'Uncle Peter.'Collection: Uncles
All she wanted was a breathing space in which to hurt.Collection: Hurt
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 smileCollection: Trying
The happiest days are when babies come.Collection: Baby
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.Collection: Thinking
[T]he merciful adjustment which nature makes when what cannot be cured must be endured.Collection: Adjustment
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.Collection: Twilight
Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.Collection: Beauty
I've found out that money is the most important thing in the world and, as God is my witness, I don't ever intend to be without it again. I'll never be hungry again.Collection: Movie
Practically everybody is suing everybody else these days.Collection: Suing
It is axiomatic among writers that no one ever sues the writer of an unsuccessful book. Just let a book go over twenty-five thousand copies and it is surprising how many people's feelings are hurt, how many screwballs think their brain children have been stolen, and how many people feel that they have been portrayed in a manner calculated to bring infamy upon them.Collection: Hurt
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.Collection: Hurt
Well, my dear, take heart. Some day, I will kiss you and you will like it. But not now, so I beg you not to be too impatient.Collection: Heart
If I said I was madly in love with you, I'd be lying and what's more, you'd know it.Collection: Lying
Hush," he said. "I am asking you to marry me. Would you be convinced if I knelt down?Collection: Asking
There ain't nothin' from the outside can lick any of us.Collection: Adventure
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.Collection: Experts
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.Collection: Years
Like most girls, her imagination carried her just as far as the altar and no further.Collection: Girl
Supposed I don't want to redeem myself? Why should I fight to uphold the system that cast me out? I shall take pleasure in seeing it smashed.Collection: Fighting
I'll think of it tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.Collection: Thinking
But Rhett, you mustn't bring me anything else so expensive. It's awfully kind of you, but I really couldn't accept anything else." "Indeed? Well, I shall bring you presents so long as it pleases me and so long as I see things that will enhance your charms. I shall bring you dark-green watered silk for a frock to match the bonnet. And I warn you that I am not kind. I am tempting you with bonnets and bangles and leading you into a pit. Always remember I never do anything without reason and I never give anything without expecting something in return. I always get paid.Collection: Dark
It had been so long since she had seen him and she had lived on memories until they were worn thin.Collection: Memories
Did you ever hear the Oriental proverb, "The dogs bark but the caravan passes on"? Let them bark, Scarlett. I fear nothing will stop your caravan.Collection: Dog
And apologies, once postponed, become harder and harder to make, and finally impossible.Collection: Apology
I loved something I made up, something that's just as dead as Melly is. 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.Collection: Clothes
It doesn’t matter who you marry, as long as he thinks like you and is a gentleman and a Southerner and prideful. For a woman, love comes after marriage.” “Oh, Pa, that’s such an Old Country notion!” “And a good notion it is! All this American business of running around marrying for love, like servants, like Yankees! The best marriages are when the parents choose for the girl. For how can a silly piece like yourself tell a good man from a scoundrel?Collection: Girl
[Yankees] are pretty much like southerners except with worse manners, of course, and terrible accents.Collection: Yankees
His voice stopped and they looked for a long quiet moment into each other's eyes and between them lay the sunny lost youth that they had so unthinkingly shared.Collection: Eye
To Scarlett, there was something breath-taking about Ellen O'Hara, a miracle that lived in the house with her and awed her and charmed and soothed her.Collection: House
But she knew that no matter what beauty lay behind, it must remain there. No one could go forward with a load of aching memories.Collection: Memories
I've always had a weakness for lost causes once they're really lost.Collection: Weakness
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.Collection: Sad Love
They knew that love snatched in the face of danger and death was doubly sweet for the strange excitement that went with it.Collection: Sweet
No, my dear, I'm not in love with you, no more than you are with me, and if I were, you would be the last person I'd ever tell. God help the man who ever really loves you. You'd break his heart, my darling, cruel, destructive little cat who is so careless and confident she doesn't even trouble to sheathe her claws.Collection: Love You
Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.Collection: Strong
I'd cut up my heart for you to wear if you wanted it.Collection: Romantic