Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

★★★★★

"These things I have named are but symbols of the things for which I risk my life, symbols of the kind of life I love.  For I am fighting for the old days, the old ways I love so much but which, I fear, are no gone forever, no matter how the die may fall.  For, win or lose, we lose just the same." (Ashley)

"She could look back, unmoved, at the pretty Scarlett with her fragile green morocco slippers and her flounces fragrant with lavender, but she wondered if she could be that same girl.  Scarlett O' Hara with the country  at her feet, a hundred slaves to do her bidding, the wealth of Tara like a wall behind her...somewhere, on the long road that would through those for ears, the girl with her sachet and dancing slippers had slipped away and there was left a women with sharp green eyes, who counted pennies and turned her hands into many menial tasks, a woman to whom nothing was left from the wreckage except the indestructible red earth on which she stood."

"Who am I to say?  I only know what I did, both when I was thrown out and nowadays.  I only know what other men have done.  We saw opportunity in the ruin of a civilization and we made the most of our opportunity, some honestly, some shadily, and we are still making the most of it." (Rhett)

"For years she had had her back against the stone wall of Rhett's love and had taken it as much for granted as she had taken Melanie's love, flattering herself that she drew her strength from herself alone."

"I'll think of it all 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." (Scarlett)

Sarah by Orson Scott Card

★★★★

"You can't stop thoughts like that from entering your head.  Faith doesn't mean that you never doubt.  It only means that you never act upon your doubts."

"Love is finding that the things you like best about yourself are not in you at all, but in the person who completes you."

"The love of a good man for a good women.  The love of good friends for each other. The love of parents for children, children for parents.  The love of brothers and sisters.  The memory of joy and grief, which all becomes joy when enough time has passed.  This is the treasure that I have won through all the years of my journey through this life.  And every bit of it I'll take with me beyond the grave.  I'll meet God then, and I will take all these treasures and lay them out before his feet, for God can see them easily even if mortal men cannot.  They were not mine by right.  But I hope that, having been given such gifts so undeservingly I used them well, and gave back to thee a life that was worthy."

"I believe in the Bible so seriously that I think it really is what it claims to be - a record, written by men, of stories that seemed important and truthful to them at the time of writing, using the standards of truth available to them at the time.  Our task, in reading the scriptures, is not to read it blindly as if God were dictating it to his secretary, but to read it faithfully, trying to understand what truths are being shown to use by means of, or in spite of, the words use to tell the tale."

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

★★★★★

"God warns us not to love any earthly thing above Himself, and yet He sets in a mother's heart such a fierce passion for her babes that I do not comprehend how He can test us so."

My Antonia by Willa Cather

★★★★ 1/2

"The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through by fingers...I kept as still as I could.  Nothing happened.  I did not expect anything to happen.  I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more.  I was entirely happy.  Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge.  At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.  When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep."

Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee

★★★

"The world is divided between those who stay and those who leave."

The Pianist by Wladslaw Szpilman

★★★★

"And now I was lonelier, I suppose, than anyone else in the world.  Even Defoe's creation, Robinson Crusoe, the prototype of the ideal solitary, could hope to meet another human being.  Crusoe cheered himself by thinking that such a thing could happen any day, and it kept him going.  But if any of the people now around me came near I would need to run for it and hide in mortal terror.  I had to be alone, entirely alone, if I wanted to live."

Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz by Richard Newman

★★★★