The Irish are the damnedest race. They put so much emphasis on so many wrong things.

Scarlett's mind went back through the years to the still hot noon at Tara when grey smoke curled above a blue-clad body and Melanie stood at the top of the stairs with Charles' sabre in her hand. Scarlett remembered that she had thought at the time: 'How silly! Melly couldn't even heft that sword!' But now she knew that had the necessity arisen, Melanie would have charged down those stairs and killed the Yankee - or been killed herself.

What is there to see in Europe? I'll bet those foreigners can't show us a thing we haven't got right here in Georgia.

His voice stopped and they looked for a long quiet moment into each other's eyes and between them lay the sunny lost youth that they had so unthinkingly shared.

All wars are sacred to those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight?

If! If! If! There were so many ifs in life, never any sense of security, always the dread of losing everything.

She is the only dream I ever had that lived and breathed and did not die in the face of reality." (Ashley said about Melanie)