“When I was little, my friends would gush over wedding gowns and honeymoons. But I saw too many people flush decades together down the toilet over money or kids or meaningless flings. My own parents chose to stay married, which I think is rather funny, since they show about as much affection for each other as pit bulls in a ring. Tying the knot means slipping a noose around love and choking it to death.”

“When I was a little girl,' I said, sitting down, 'the wallpaper in my room had pictures of Noah's story.' [...]You know what's weird though? It's weird that the ark would be such a kids' story, you know? I mean, it's...really a story about death. Every person who isn't in Noah's family? They die. Every animal, apart from two of each on the boat? They die. They all die in the flood. Billions of creatures. It's the worst tragedy ever,' I finished, my voice tied off by a knot in my chest.[...] 'What the hell,'I said, 'pardon my language, was that doing on my wallpaper?”

“Then my mother shocked me. She said, " All those things that you want from your relationship, Liz? I have always wanted those things too." [She] showed me the handful of bullets she'd had to bite over the decades in order to stay happily married (and she was happily married...) to my father. "You have to understand how little I was raised to expect that I desired in life, honey. Remember- I come from a different time and place... and you have to understand how much I love your father.”

“We ate in the dining room alcove looking over the hillside and the silent dark rooftops of my neighbors. The lights of the valley glittered below.We were both tired but we smiled at each other, and I felt a kind of happiness growing inside me. It was good to look across the table and see someone, and I thought maybe it was time to start thinking about that again—about finding someone. Sharing my life maybe.Or maybe just getting more friends around. Except when I pictured the friends I wanted around, they all looked like Dan, and when I thought about trying to find someone to share my life with, he too looked a little too much like Dan for comfort.”

“Scarlett, I don't know just when it was that the bleak realization came over me that my own private shadow show was over. Perhaps in the first five minutes at Bull Run when I saw the first man I killed drop to the ground. But I knew it was over and I could no longer be a spectator. No, I suddenly found myself on the curtain, an actor, posturing and making futile gestures. My little inner world was gone, invaded by people whose thoughts were not my thoughts, whose actions were as alien as a Hottentot's. They'd tramped through my world with slimy feet and there was no place left where I could take refuge when things became too bad to stand. When I was in prison, I thought: When the war is over, I can go back to the old life and the old dreams and watch the shadow show again. But, Scarlett, there's no going back. And this which is facing all of us now is worse than war and worse than prison—and, to me, worse than death.... So, you see, Scarlett, I'm being punished for being afraid.”

“When I wear my wedding ring I think of her. I also think of my wife.”