"Sanity and madness. Well, certainly, sanity is a precarious state, a thin ridge, a tightrope. How ever do most of us keep upright? Like tight-rope walkers, by not looking to either side, I suppose, like horses in blinkers. I should never have looked. I should never have looked, I should never have looked."
- The middle ground, Margaret Drabble

WORRY, WORRY, WORRY; SHE FELT BRUISED WITH IT

Books read:
Curtis Sittenfeld - Sisterland
Doris Lessing - The good terrorist

WHEREAS, SHE, SCARLETT—

Books read (in order):
Doris Lessing - The sweetest dream
Margaret Drabble - A day in the life of a smiling woman: complete short stories
Margaret Mitchell - Gone with the wind
Sophie Hannah - Kind of cruel

I finished reading Gone with the wind a couple of days ago and I seriously didn't think that there could be life after it. I'm still not sure that there is. It was so, so good. I've never seen the movie, so I had no idea how it would end. Let's just say I cried (my very romantic, very secret side came out). And oh, Scarlett! I adore her, and all her "unwomanly" ways.

I LOVE SCARLETT O'HARA.

THE NECESSITY OF BEING HELPLESS, CLINGING DOE-EYED CREATURES

"Ellen's life was not easy, nor was it happy, but she did not expect life to be easy, and, if it was not happy, that was woman's lot. It was a man's world, and she accepted it as such. The man owned the property, and the woman managed it. The man took the credit for the management, and the woman praised his cleverness. The man roared like a bull when a splinter was in his finger, and the woman muffled the moans of childbirth, lest she disturb him."

""I wish to Heaven I was married," she said resentfully as she attacked the yams with loathing. "I'm tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anyting I want to do. I'm tired of acting like I don't eat more than a bird, and walking when I want to run and saying I feel faint after a waltz, when I could dance for two days and never get tired. I'm tired of saying "How wonderful you are!" to fool men who haven't got one-half the sense I've got, and I'm tired of pretending I don't know anything, so men can tell me things and feel important while they're doing it...""
- Gone with the wind, Margaret Mitchell