Alexandra Ripley Quotes

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

Should-haves solve nothing. It's the next thing to happen that needs thinking about.

— Alexandra Ripley

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

— Alexandra Ripley

“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

“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

“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

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

— Alexandra Ripley

“No woman can be truly beautiful who is not, also sometimes, truly ugly.”

— Alexandra Ripley

“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

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

— Alexandra Ripley

And the world is where we belong, all of it.

— Alexandra Ripley

“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

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

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

“Something happens to people when they're masked. They become too free, uncivilized. They may do anything.”

— Alexandra Ripley

“How could a man know the truth of his own soul?”

— Alexandra Ripley

“Charlestonians had a particularly vicious and cunning game, developed after the War. They treated outsiders with so much graciousness and consideration that their politeness became a weapon. 'Visitors end up feeling as if they're wearing shoes for the first time in their lives. It's said that only the strongest ever recover from the experience. The Chinese never developed a torture to match it, although they're a very subtle people.”

— Alexandra Ripley

“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

“Johnny Reb' laughed. 'What's it to a soldier the right and the wrong of it all? He's there for the fighting, that's what he likes. Doesn't matter who you're fighting, long as he gives you a good fight.”

— Alexandra Ripley

“I guess I let things get me down as far as a person can go, she thought with disgust, and her own scorn warmed her. I won't let it happen again, ever, no matter what comes. Once you get down all the way, the road can only go up.”

— Alexandra Ripley

Every baby's the only in my observation of mothers.

— Alexandra Ripley

“That Billy was her only child was testimony to death of the romance.”

— Alexandra Ripley

Why don't you put on an animal's pelt and drag me to your house by my hair?

— Alexandra Ripley

“During that year Scarlett had been so busy, had experienced such changes in her life, that she'd been able to block out the pain he had caused her. Now it tore her heart, and with the pain was a deep fear of Rhett's unpredictable power. She transformed them into rage. Rage was strengthening.”

— Alexandra Ripley

“Scarlett O'Hara did the most courageous thing she had ever been called on to do. She faced up to failure.”

— Alexandra Ripley

Books have become products, like cereal or perfume or deodorant.

— Alexandra Ripley

“I really don't know why Scarlett has such appeal. When I began writing the sequel, I had a lot of trouble because Scarlett is not my kind of person. She's virtually illiterate, has no taste, never learns from her mistakes.”

— Alexandra Ripley