“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.”
“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.”
“Should-haves solve nothing. It's the next thing to happen that needs thinking about.”
“If only' repeated again and again in her head like a battering ram...'if only' could break your heart.”
“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.”
“One of the injustices of the world was that it was so easy to make the innocent and caring ones happy with so little.”
“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.”
“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.”
“And if things always stayed the same, Scarlett, what would be the reason for bothering to draw breath?”
“No woman can be truly beautiful who is not, also sometimes, truly ugly.”
“Everyone knew that once a woman was 30, she might as well be dead.”
“They have a saying, the French, that no woman, can be truly beautiful who is not also sometimes truly ugly.”
“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?”
“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...”
“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”
“How could a man know the truth of his own soul?”
“Strong people didn’t like witnesses to their weak moments.”
“Should-haves solve nothing. It's the next thing to happen that needs thinking about.”
“What a waste! What a horrible, senseless waste. When happiness was so wonderful, how could anyone cling to a love that made them unhappy?”
“I’m going to make a world for myself by my rules, not anybody else’s. Don’t worry about me. I’m going to learn to be happy.”
“I won’t think about it now, there’s nothing I can do about any of those things.”
“What was the use of love if all it did was ruin things?”
“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.”
“What gives people whose whole life is a lie the right to judge me?”
“You don’t have to do anything, you only have to be what you are.”
“If only” could break your heart.”
“Should-haves solve nothing. It’s the next thing to happen that needs thinking about”
“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.”
“When things are at their worst, Scarlett, the only thing to do is find something to laugh about. It keeps you sane… and it stops your teeth chattering from fear.”
“I won’t risk it again. I won’t destroy myself for you”
“If you try it,” Whip said, “you’ll be thrown out on your inalienable ass.”
“قليل من الأشياء, وكثيرٌ من القلب.”
“Nothing is so indecent that it cannot be said to another person if the proper words are used to convey it.”
“Reader, do you think it is a terrible thing to hope when there is really no reason to hope at all? Or is it (as the soldier said about happiness) something that you might just as well do, since,in the end, it really makes no difference to anyone but you?”
“So then they’d snuggled up to each other, naked, and started to talk. Ezra told her about the time he was six and sculpted a red squirrel out of clay, only to have his brother squash it. How he used to smoke a lot of pot after his parents got divorced. About the time he had to take the family’s fox terrier to the vet to have her put to sleep. Aria told him about how when she was little, she kept a can of split pea soup named Pee as a pet and cried when her mom tried to cook Pee for dinner.”
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