It is difficult for the American mind to adjust to the realization that the Rhetts and the Scarletts were as much monsters as the keepers of Buchenwald-they just dressed more attractively.

I look at you and I see the final triumph of stupidity in the world!

I was born black and female.

Big Walter used to say, he'd get right wet in the eyes sometimes, lean his head back with the water standing in his eyes and say, 'Seem like God didn't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams - but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while.'

I happen to believe that most people - and this is where I differ from many of my contemporaries, or at least as they express themselves - I think that virtually every human being is dramatically interesting. Not only is he dramatically interesting, he is a creature of stature whoever he is.

It isn't a circle--it is simply a long line--as in geometry, you know, one that reaches into infinity. And because we cannot see the end--we also cannot see how it changes. And it is very odd by those who see the changes--who dream, who will not give up--are called idealists...and those who see only the circle we call them the "realists"!

I believe that one of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific. Universality, I think, emerges from truthful identity of what is.