Margaret Mitchell

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.

men are so conceited they__l believe anything that flatters them

I wish to Heaven I was married," she said resentfully as she attacked the yams with loathing. "I'm tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do. I'm tired of acting like I don't 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. I'm tired of saying, 'How wonderful you are!' to fool men who haven't got one-half the sense I've got, and I'm tired of pretending I don't know anything, so men can tell me things and feel important while they're doing it... I can't eat another bite.

Pride & honor & truth & virtue & kindliness," he enumerated silkily. "You are right, Scarlett. They aren't important when a boat is sinking. But look around you at your friends. Either they are bringing their boats ashore safely with cargoes intact or they are content to go down with all flags flying.

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

This is what happens when you look back to happiness, this pain, this heart-break, this discontent

She had never understood either of the men she had loved and so she had lost them both. Now, she had a fumbling knowledge that, had she ever understood Ashley, she would never have loved him; had she ever understood Rhett, she would never have lost him.

Suddenly she hated them all because they were different from her, because they carried their losses with an air that she could never attain, would never wish to attain. She hated them, these smiling, light-footed strangers, these proud fools who took pride in something they had lost, seeming to be proud that they had lost it.

[T]he merciful adjustment which nature makes when what cannot be cured must be endured.

Child, it's a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, because after she's faced the worst she can't ever really fear anything again. ...Scarlett, always save something to fear_ even as you save something to love...

You must be more gentle, dear, more sedate,' Ellen told her daughter. 'You must not interrupt gentlemen when they are speaking, even if you do think you know more about matters than they do. Gentlemen do not like forward girls.

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

As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.

As God is my witness, as God is my witness they__e not going to lick me. I__ going to live through this and when it__ all over, I__l never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I__l never be hungry again. - Scarlett

That is the one unforgivable sin in any society. Be different and be damned!

A startling thought this, that a woman could handle businessmatters as well as or better than a man, a revolutionary thought toScarlett who had been reared in the tradition that men wereomniscient and women none too bright. Of course, she haddiscovered that this was not altogether true but the pleasantfiction still stuck in her mind. Never before had she put thisremarkable idea into words. She sat quite still, with the heavybook across her lap, her mouth a little open with surprise,thinking that during the lean months at Tara she had done a man'swork and done it well. She had been brought up to believe that awoman alone could accomplish nothing, yet she had managed theplantation without men to help her until Will came. Why, why, hermind stuttered, I believe women could manage everything in theworld without men's help--except having babies, and God knows, nowoman in her right mind would have babies if she could help it.

What__ broken is broken__nd I__ rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I live_I__ too old to believe in such sentimentalities as clean slates and starting all over.

She was darkness and he was darkness and there had never been anything before this time, only darkness and his lips upon her. She tried to speak and his mouth was over hers again. Suddenly she had a wild thrill such as she had never known; joy, fear, madness, excitement, surrender to arms that were too strong, lips too bruising, fate that moved too fast.