Alexandra Ripley > Quotes

“But if you knew that, why on earth did you marry her?" Rosemary asked.

"Why?" Rhett's mouth twisted in a smile.
"Because she was so full of fire and so recklessly, stubbornly brave.Because she was such a child beneath all her pretenses.Because she was unlike any woman I had ever known. She fascinated
me,infuriated me, drove me mad. I loved her as consumingly as she loved him. From the day I first laid eyes on her. It was a kind of disease."
There was a weight of sorrow in his voice. He bowed his head into his two hands and laughed shakily. His voice was muffled and blurred by his fingers. "What a grotesque practical joke life is. Now Ashley Wilkes is a free man and would marry Scarlett on a moment's notice, and I want to be rid of her. Naturally that makes her determined to have me. She wants only what she cannot have."
Rhett raised his head. "I'm afraid," he said quietly, "afraid that it will all begin again. I know that she's heartless and completely selfish, that she's like a child who cries for a toy and then breaks it once she has it. But there are moments when she tilts her head at a certain angle, or she smiles that gleeful smile, or she suddenly looks lost-and I come close to forgetting what I know.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“You belong with me, Scarlett, haven't you figured that out? And the world is where we belong, all of it. We're not home-and-hearth people. We're the adventurers, the buccaneers, the blockade runners. Without challenge, we're only half alive. We can go anywhere, and as long as we're together, it will belong to us. But, my pet, we'll never belong to it. That's for other people, not for us.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“Should-haves solve nothing. It's the next thing to happen that needs thinking about.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“If only' repeated again and again in her head like a battering ram...'if only' could break your heart.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“But you know who you are when you're on your own out there in all that emptiness. There's no past, no holding on to the scraps that are all you've got left. Everything is that minute, or maybe tomorrow, not yesterday.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“It's the centuries, Scarlett darling. All the life lived there, all the joy and all the sorrow, all the feasts and battles, they're in the air around and the land beneath you. It's time, years beyond our counting weighing without weight on the earth. You cannot see it or smell it or hear it or touch it, but you feel it brushing your skin and speaking without sound. Time. And mystery.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“One of the injustices of the world was that it was so easy to make the innocent and caring ones happy with so little.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“And if things always stayed the same, Scarlett, what would be the reason for bothering to draw breath?”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“Rhett glanced over his shoulder as if there had been a sound. His eyes met hers, and surprise stiffened his lithe body. For a long immeasurable moment the two of them looked at each other while the space between them widened. Then blandness smoothed Rhett's face as he touched two fingers to his hat brim in salute. Scarlett lifted her hand.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“They have a saying, the French, that no woman, can be truly beautiful who is not also sometimes truly ugly.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett, Part 2

“No woman can be truly beautiful who is not, also sometimes, truly ugly.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett, Part 2

“Something happens to people when they're masked. They become too free, uncivilized. They may do anything.”
― Alexandra Ripley, New Orleans Legacy

“Everyone knew that once a woman was 30, she might as well be dead.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“But listen well. In Tir na nOg, because there is no sorrow, there is no joy.
Do you hear the meaning of the seachain's song?”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“How could a man know the truth of his own soul?”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“The faint of lemon verbena surrounded her, floating gently from Eleanor Butler's silk gown and silken hair. It was the fragrance that had always been part of Ellen O'Hara, the scent for Scarlett of comfort, of safety, of love, of life before the War”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett, Part 2

“And the world is where we belong, all of it.”
― Alexandra Ripley

“Strong people didn’t like witnesses to their weak moments.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“I’m going to make a world for myself by my rules, not anybody else’s. Don’t worry about me. I’m going to learn to be happy.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“To anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them the land they live on is like their mother. It's the only thing that lasts, that's worth working for, for fighting for...”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“Should-haves solve nothing. It's the next thing to happen that needs thinking about.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“Why?” Rhett’s mouth twisted in a smile. “Because she was so full of fire and so recklessly, stubbornly brave. Because she was such a child beneath all her pretenses. Because she was unlike any woman I had ever known. She fascinated me, infuriated me, drove me mad. I loved her as consumingly as she loved him. From the day I first laid eyes on her. It was a kind of disease.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind

“What was the use of love if all it did was ruin things?”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“What a waste! What a horrible, senseless waste. When happiness was so wonderful, how could anyone cling to a love that made them unhappy?”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“You don’t have to do anything, you only have to be what you are.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“She’d done harder things in her life, she could do this. She had to.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“And she understood. She would have done the same. She understood, too, why she'd been wrong to offer Ballyhara as a substitute for land he'd farmed all his life. It made all his work meaningless, and the work of his sons, his brothers, his father, his father's father.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“My beloved,” she whispered, “my love.” Rhett bowed once again. The ship was moving away from the dock. He put his hat on and turned away. His thumb tilted the hat to the back of his head. Don’t go, cried Scarlett’s heart. Rhett glanced over his shoulder as if there had been a sound. His eyes met hers, and surprise stiffened his lithe body. For a long, immeasurable moment the two of them looked at each other while the space between them widened. Then blandness smoothed Rhett’s face as he touched two fingers to his hat brim in salute. Scarlett lifted her hand. He was still standing there on the dock when the ship turned into the channel to the sea. When Scarlett could see him no longer, she sank numbly into a deck chair.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind

“What gives people whose whole life is a lie the right to judge me?”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett

“That Billy was her only child was testimony to death of the romance.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett