Ashley Wilkes Quotes

She saw in his eyes defeat of her wild dreams, her mad desires.

She [Melanie] is the only dream I ever had that lived and breathed and did not die in the face of reality.

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.

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.

For I am fighting for the old days, the old ways which I love so much, but which, I fear, are now gone forever, no matter how the die may fall. For, win or lose, we lose just the same. - Ashley Wilkes, Gone with the Wind

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.

He gives me a kiss that barely touches my lips – it means nothing or everything. After he’s gone, I think, Happy birthday to me. Jack says, ‘That was the guy?’ ‘That was him.’ Jake shakes his head. ‘What?’ ‘He’s not for you,’ he says. I say, ‘How do you know?’ but what I mean is, How do you know? ‘He’s like Ashley Wilkes,’ he says. ‘Any one of these guys is Rhett-ier than he is.’ Again, I ask my benignly inflected, ‘How do you know?’ ‘How do I know?’ he says, tackling me into a bear hug. ‘How do I know? I know, that’s how I know.

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.

Sometimes those who are easiest to love are hardest to respect. - Ashley Wilkes

Rhett, do you really--is it to protect me that you--" "Yes, my dear, it is my much advertised chivalry that makes me protect you." The mocking light began to dance in his black eyes and all signs of earnestness fled from his face. "And why? Because of my deep love for you, Mrs. Kennedy. Yes, I have silently hungered and thirsted for you and worshipped you from afar; but being an honorable man, like Mr. Ashley Wilkes, I have concealed it from you. You are, alas, Frank's wife and honor has forbidden my telling this to you. But even as Mr. Wilkes' honor cracks occasionally, so mine is cracking now and I reveal my secret passion and my--" "Oh, for God's sake, hush!" interrupted Scarlett, annoyed as usual when he made her look like a conceited fool, and not caring to have Ashley and his honor become the subject of further conversation. "What was the other thing you wanted to tell me?" "What! You change the subject when I am baring a loving but lacerated heart?

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.

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.

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.

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.