I wonder if anyone but me realizes what goes on in that head back of your deceptively sweet face.

If Gone With the Wind has a theme it is that of survival. What makes some people come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong, and brave, go under? It happens in every upheaval. Some people survive; others don't. What qualities are in those who fight their way through triumphantly that are lacking in those that go under? I only know that survivors used to call that quality 'gumption.' So I wrote about people who had gumption and people who didn't.

He made her play and she had almost forgotten how. Life had been so serious and so bitter. He knew how to play and swept her along with him.

Once, when she was six years old, she had fallen from a tree, flat on her stomach. She could still recall that sickening interval before breath came back into her body. Now, as she looked at him, she felt the same way she had felt then, breathless, stunned, nauseated.

I'll think of it tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.

And apologies, once postponed, become harder and harder to make, and finally impossible.

Yes, I want money more than anything else in the world.” “Then you’ve made the only choice. But there’s a penalty attached, as there is to most things you want. It’s loneliness.