in this short life that only lasts ah hour how much-how little-is within our power.
There ain't nothing from the outside can lick any of us.
Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it's no worse than it is.
If Gone With the Wind has a theme it is that of survival. What makes some people come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong, and brave, go under? It happens in every upheaval. Some people survive; others don't. What qualities are in those who fight their way through triumphantly that are lacking in those that go under? I only know that survivors used to call that quality 'gumption. ' So I wrote about people who had gumption and people who didn't.
Vanity was stronger than love at sixteen and there was no room in her hot heart now for anything but hate.
Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was.
I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken - and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.
I had not seen that until - and when it first came out I was told. I had not seen or been aware of all of that physical evidence. And when I saw it, I was horrified. It was so astounding to me to see that there was that much evidence.
I apologize for my wild imagination.
Women are strong, strong, terribly strong. We don't know how strong until we are pushing out our babies. We are too often treated like babies having babies when we should be in training, like acolytes, novices to high priestesshood, like serious applicants for the space program.
During the air war of 1944, a four-man combat crew on a B-17 bomber took a vow to never abandon one another no matter how desperate the situation. The aircraft was hit by flak during a mission and went into a terminal dive, and the pilot ordered everyone to bail out. The top turret gunner obeyed the order, but the ball turret gunner discovered that a piece of flak had jammed his turret and he could not get out. The other three men in his pact could have bailed out with the parachutes, but they stayed with him until the plan hit the ground and exploded. They all died.