Margaret Mitchell citations

Page 3

“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.”

“Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.”

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

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

“I do not write with ease, nor am I ever pleased with anything I write. And so I rewrite.”

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

“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.”

“He made her play and she had almost forgotten how. Life had been so serious and so bitter. He knew how to play and swept her along with him.”

“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.”

“So I have. Let me hold the baby, Scarlett. Oh, I know how to hold babies. I have many strange accomplishments. Well, he certainly looks like Frank. All except the whiskers, but give him time.”

“I hope not. It’s a girl.”

“I'm riding you with a slack rein, my pet, but don't forget that I'm riding with curb and spurs just the same.”

“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.”

“You have eternity in which to explain and only one night to be a martyr in the amphitheater Get out, darling, and let me see the lions eat you.”

“All really nice girls wonder when men don't try to kiss them. They know they shouldn't want them to and they know they must act insulted if they do, but just the same, they wish the men would try.”

“you can go to the Devil and not at your leisure. You can go now, for all I care.'
'My pet, I've been to the Devil and he's a very dull fellow. I won't go there again, not even for you.”

“You should be kissed and often, by someone who knows how.”

“It had been so long since she had seen him and she had lived on memories until they were worn thin.”

“It's not because I've -what is the phrase? -'swept you off your feet' by my -er- ardor?”

“Take my handkerchief, Scarlett. Never, at any crisis of your life, have I known
you to have a handkerchief.”

“Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless.”

“She couldn't survey the wreck of the world with an air of casual unconcern.”

“[Yankees] are pretty much like southerners except with worse manners, of course, and terrible accents.”

“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.”

“But, Scarlett, did it ever occur to you that even the most deathless love could wear out?”

“The usual masculine dissillusionment is discovering that a woman has a brain”

“Fo' Gawd, Miss Scarlett! We's got ter have a doctah. Ah- Ah- Miss Scarlett, Ah doan know nuthin' 'bout bringin' babies. -Prissy”

“They knew that love snatched in the face of danger and death was doubly sweet for the strange excitement that went with it.”

“She [Melanie] is the only dream I ever had that lived and breathed and did not die in the face of reality.”

“Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything.”