After all, tomorrow is another day.
Crackers are short on sparkle.
Oh, why was he so handsomely blond, so courteously aloof, so maddeningly boring with his talk about Europe and books and music and poetry and things that interested her not at all – and yet so desirable?
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.
Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.
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.
How closely women clutch the very chains that bind them!
As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.
You’re like the thief who isn’t the least bit sorry he stole, but is terribly, terribly sorry he’s going to jail. – Rhett Butler.
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.
The whole world can’t lick us but we can lick ourselves by longing too hard for things we haven’t got any more – and by remembering too much.
All she wanted was a breathing space in which to hurt.
I loved something I made up.
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.
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.
Make up your mind to this. If you are different, you are isolated, not only from people of your own age but from those of your parents’ generation and from your children’s generation too. They’ll never understand you and they’ll be shocked no matter what you do. But your grandparents would probably be proud of you and say: ‘There’s a chip off the old block,’ and your grandchildren will sigh enviously and say: ‘What an old rip Grandma must have been!’ and they’ll try to be like you.
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.
Come, Scarlett, you are no child, no schoolgirl to put me off with foolish excuses about decency and so forth. Say you’ll marry me when I come back or, before God, I won’t go. I’ll stay around here and play a guitar under your window every night and sing at the top of my voice and compromise you, so you’ll have to marry me to save your reputation.
There was no one to tell Scarlett that her own personality, frighteningly vital though it was, was more attractive than any masquerade she might adopt. Had she been told, she would have been pleased but unbelieving. And the civilization of which she was a part would have been unbelieving too, for at no time, before or since, had so low a premium been placed on feminine naturalness.
War and marriage and childbirth had passed over her without touching any deep chord within her and she was unchanged.