Margaret Mitchell

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 don't. 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 didn't.

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.

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.

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.

Hardships make or break people.

Scarlett O'Hara 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.

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__.

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.

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

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.

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 it's be brave or else be killed.

After all, tomorrow is another day!

He would never be any different and now Scarlett realize the truth and accepted it without emotion__hat until he died Gerald would always be waiting for Ellen, always listening for her. Her was in some dim borderline country where time was standing still and Ellen was always in the next room. The mainspring of his existence was taken away when she died and with it has gone his bounding assurance, his impudence and his restless vitality. Ellen was the audience before which the blustering drama of Gerald O'Hara had been played Now the curtain had been rung down forever, the footlights dimmed and the audience suddenly vanished, while the stunned old actor remained on his empty stage, waiting for his cues.

You should be kissed and by someone who knows how.

Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.

You are a child if you thought I didn__ know, for all your smothering yourself under that hot lap robe. Of course, I knew. Why else do you think I__e been___e stopped suddenly and a silence fell between them. He picked up the reins and clucked to the horse.

I'd cut up my heart for you to wear if you wanted it.

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.