Margaret Mitchell: love quotes

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.

But I do love him. I've loved him for years. Love can't change to apathy in a minute.

— I only know that I love you!
— That's your misfortune.

I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new.
What is 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 lived.

The fluttering lashes were his undoing.

But, Scarlett, did it ever occur to you that even the most deathless love could wear out?... Mine wore out... Did it ever occur to you that I loved you as much as a man can love a woman? Loved you for years before I finally got you? During the war I'd go away and try to forget you, but I couldn't and I always had to come back.... I loved you but I couldn't let you know it. You're so brutal to those who love you, Scarlett. You take their love and hold it over their heads like a whip.

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.

She was so like you, so willful, so brave and gay and full of high spirits, and I could pet her and spoil her--just as I wanted to pet you. But she wasn't like you--she loved me. It was a blessing that I could take the love you didn't want and give it to her. . . . When she went, she took everything.

There can't ever be happiness except when like mates like.

She had to lose them all to realize that she loved Rhett--loved him because he was strong and unscrupulous, passionate and earthy, like herself.

Laugh, if you like, but I wanted to take care of you, to pet you, to give you everything you wanted. I wanted to marry you and protect you and give you a free rein in anything that would make you happy. You'd had such a struggle. No one knew better than I what you'd gone through and I wanted you to stop fighting and let me fight for you. I wanted you to play, like a child--for you were a child, a brave, frightened, bullheaded child. I think you are still a child. No one but a child could be so headstrong and so insensitive.

Marry for convenience and love for pleasure.

"Do I mean so much to you?"
"Well, yes. You see, I've invested a good deal of money in you, and I'd hate to lose it."

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?