Ashley Wilkes Quotes

“She saw in his eyes defeat of her wild dreams, her mad desires.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“I can't make you understand because you don't know the meaning of fear. You have the heart of a lion and an utter lack of imagination and I envy you both of those qualities. You'll never mind facing realities and you'll never want to escape from them as I do.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“She [Melanie] is the only dream I ever had that lived and breathed and did not die in the face of reality.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“His voice stopped and they looked for a long quiet moment into each other's eyes and between them lay the sunny lost youth that they had so unthinkingly shared.”
― Margaret Mitchell

“But, Ashley, what are you afraid of?'

'Oh, nameless things. Things which sound very silly when they are
put into words. Mostly of having life suddenly become too real, of
being brought into personal, too personal, contact with some of the
simple facts of life. It isn't that I mind splitting logs here in
the mud, but I do mind what it stands for. I do mind, very much,
the loss of the beauty of the old life I loved. Scarlett, before
the war, life was beautiful. There was a glamor to it, a
perfection and a completeness and a symmetry to it like Grecian
art. Maybe it wasn't so to everyone. I know that now. But to me,
living at Twelve Oaks, there was a real beauty to living. I
belonged in that life. I was a part of it. And now it is gone and
I am out of place in this new life, and I am afraid. Now, I know
that in the old days it was a shadow show I watched. I avoided
everything which was not shadowy, people and situations which were
too real, too vital. I resented their intrusion.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“In the end what will happen will be what has happened whenever a civilization breaks up. The people who have brains and courage come through and the ones who haven't are winnowed out. At least, it has been interesting, if not comfortable, to witness a Gotterdammerung.'

'A what?'

'A dusk of the gods. Unfortunately, we Southerners did think we were gods.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Melanie is the gentlest of dreams and a part of my dreaming. And if the war had not come I would have lived out my life, happily buried at Twelve Oaks, contentedly watching life go by and never being a part of it. But when the war came, life as it really is thrust itself against me. The first time I went into action—it was at Bull Run, you remember—I saw my boyhood friends blown to bits and heard dying horses scream and learned the sickeningly horrible feeling of seeing men crumple up and spit blood when I shot them. But those weren't the worst things about the war, Scarlett. The worst thing about the war was the people I had to live with.

I had sheltered myself from people all my life, I had carefully selected my few friends. But the war taught me I had created a world of my own with dream people in it. It taught me what people really are, but it didn't teach me how to live with them. And I'm afraid I'll never learn. Now, I know that in order to support my wife and child, I will have to make my way among a world of people with whom I have nothing in common.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“It's a curse—this not wanting to look on naked realities. Until the war, life was never more real to me than a shadow show on a curtain. And I preferred it so. I did not like the outlines of things to be too sharp. I like them gently blurred, a little hazy... In other words, Scarlett, I am a coward.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Scarlett, I don't know just when it was that the bleak realization came over me that my own private shadow show was over. Perhaps in the first five minutes at Bull Run when I saw the first man I killed drop to the ground. But I knew it was over and I could no longer be a spectator. No, I suddenly found myself on the curtain, an actor, posturing and making futile gestures. My little inner world was gone, invaded by people whose thoughts were not my thoughts, whose actions were as alien as a Hottentot's. They'd tramped through my world with slimy feet and there was no place left where I could take refuge when things became too bad to stand. When I was in prison, I thought: When the war is over, I can go back to the old life and the old dreams and watch the shadow show again. But, Scarlett, there's no going back. And this which is facing all of us now is worse than war and worse than prison—and, to me, worse than death.... So, you see, Scarlett, I'm being punished for being afraid.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind