If I said I was madly in love with you, I'd be lying and what's more, you'd know it.
Margaret MitchellRead
I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again 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.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the idea that it is better to remember things as they were at their best rather than trying to mend what was broken.
Margaret Mitchell expresses a viewpoint that acceptance of brokenness is preferable to the futile effort of trying to fix what cannot truly be restored. Instead of piecing together the past to create a façade of wholeness, she suggests that one should cherish the best memories while acknowledging the reality of what has been lost or damaged.
In practice
During a discussion about overcoming loss, this quote could be used to highlight the importance of acceptance.
If I said I was madly in love with you, I'd be lying and what's more, you'd know it.
You're like the thief who isn't the least bit sorry he stole, but is terribly, terribly sorry he's going to jail. - Rhett Butler
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 do not like the outlines of things to be too sharp. I like them gently blurred, a little hazy.
Well, my dear, take heart. Some day, I will kiss you and you will like it. But not now, so I beg you not to be too impatient.
men are so conceited they’ll believe anything that flatters them
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?
(On entering Carmel) I came to save souls and especially to pray for priests.
There are two different stories in horror: internal and external. In external horror films, the evil comes from the outside, the other tribe, this thing in the darkness that we don't understand. Internal is the human heart.
What is the right of the huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey? Shall the fields and vallies, which a beneficent God has formed to teem with the life of innumerable multitudes, be condemned to everlasting barrenness?
No one comes from the earth like grass. We come like trees. We all have roots.
I was seen in earlier years by family members and people of authority as somebody wasting his time. I had trouble with the restrictions of conformity. It made me edgy.
I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living.
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