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.

Scarlett, always save something to fear—even as you save something to love.

I won't think of it now. I can't stand it now. I'll think of it later.

And if we folks have a motto, it's this: 'Don't holler - smile and bide your time.' We've survived a passel of things that way, smiling and biding our time, and we've gotten to be experts at surviving.

Everybody's mainspring is different. And I want to say this - folks whose mainsprings are busted are better dead.

In the end what will happen will be what has happened whenever a civilization breaks up. The people who have brains and courage come through and the ones who haven't are winnowed out.

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.