Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

With the spirit of her people who would not know defeat, even when it stared them in the face, she raised her chin. She could get Rhett back. She knew she could. There had never been a man she couldn't get, once she set her mind upon him.

In fact, I'm ill bred enough to be proud of having a smart wife.

Men haven't got much sense, have they, when you get down to rock bottom?

“Go on! Go on now! I want you to hurry. I don’t want to ever see you again. I hope a cannon ball lands right on you. I hope it blows you to a million pieces. I..”
“Never mind the rest. I follow your general idea."

“Scarlett, you do like me, don’t you?”
“Well, sometimes,” she answered cautiously.“When you aren’t acting like a varmint.”
“I think you like me because I am a varmint."

She had not bargained on this—this treacherous warm tide of feeling that made her want to run her hands through his hair, to feel his lips upon her mouth.

You’ve got no more sense than a June bug, Missy.

“I don’t even intend to kiss you, either.”
“Then why is your mouth all pursed up in that ridiculous way?”

But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money.

If you are different, you are isolated, not only from people of your own age but from those of your parents' generation and from your children's generation too. They'll never understand you and they'll be shocked no matter what you do. But your grandparents would probably be proud of you and say: 'There's a chip off the old block,' and your grandchildren will sigh enviously and say: 'What an old rip Grandma must have been!' and they'll try to be like you.

She was so like you, so willful, so brave and gay and full of high spirits, and I could pet her and spoil her--just as I wanted to pet you. But she wasn't like you--she loved me. It was a blessing that I could take the love you didn't want and give it to her. . . . When she went, she took everything.

She couldn’t go home! She couldn’t run away! She would have to see it through, bear all the malice of the girls and her own humiliation and heartbreak. To run away would only give them more ammunition.

She had wanted him, in that first instant, wanted him as simply and unreasoningly as she wanted food to eat, horses to ride and a soft bed on which to lay herself.

In those two weeks in New Orleans, she learned everything about him except what he really was.

My pet, I've been to the devil and he's a very dull fellow. I won't go there again, even for you...

She had never understood either of the men she had loved and so she had lost them both. Now, she had a fumbling knowledge that, had she ever understood Ashley, she would never have loved him; had she ever understood Rhett, she would never have lost him.