Quotes About Regret

Living our lives was like living in a long house. We entered as babies at one end, and we exited when our time came. And in between we moved through this one, great, long room. Everyone we ever met, and every thought and action lived in that room with us. Until we made peace with the less agreeable parts of our past they'd continue to heckle us from way down the long house. And sometimes the really loud, obnoxious ones told us what to do, directing our actions even years later. Gamache

Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive,

You know, don't you," Armand said, "that almost every parent feels like you do at some stage. Wishes they could go back to a carefree life. I can't tell you how often Reine-Marie and I looked at Daniel and Annie throwing tantrums and wished they were someone else's children

Had CC de Poitiers known she was going to be murdered she might have bought her husband, Richard, a Christmas gift.

Regret for things said, for things done, and not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be.

Al's mouth formed the beginning of a word. Why, perhaps. Or, what. But it died there. And Gamache saw Laurent's father pack up his home, take all his possessions, and move. To that other world. Where nine-year-old boys were killed. A world where nine-year-old boys were murdered. Armand Gamache was the moving man, the ferryman, who took him there. And once across there was no going back.

I said I was only going to recite them once, and he could do with them as he wished." Armand Gamache lowered his fork to his plate and listened. "I don't know. I was wrong. I'm sorry." Lacoste recited them slowly, lifting a finger to count them off. "I need help," the Chief said, completing the statements.

The old Hadley house was abandoned now. Had been empty for months. But Peter knew it wasn't empty. For one thing he'd left part of himself in it. Not a hand or a nose or a foot, thank God. But things that had no substance but fantastic weight. He'd left his hope there, and trust. He'd left his faith there too. What little he had, he'd lost. There. Peter

I'm sorry, I don't know, I need help, I forget.

If one hadn't died with a hole in her heart,' said Nichol. Clara winced.

The funny thing about murder is that the act is often committed decades before the actual action.

Really? You have that ability, Chief Inspector? To just forget? Lucky you." They held each other's eyes. No one with gray in their hair got there without things they'd prefer to forget. But could not.

Now here's a good one: you're lying on your deathbed. You have one hour to live. Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?

This is what comes of trust and friendship, loyalty and love, thought Peter. You get screwed. Betrayed. You get wounded so deeply you can barely breathe and sometimes it kills you. Or worse. It kills the people you love most. Ben had almost killed Clara. He'd trusted Ben. Loved Ben. And this is what happened. Never again. Gamache had been right about Matthew 10:36.

was wrong. I'm sorry. I don't know. I need help.

What if you were really meant to be with someone? But you kept messing about and having the Horn and so on and you lost them.

You STUPID stupid girl. Honestly, you have done some stupid stupid things in your time, but this takes the biscuit of stupidity.

You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past.

You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past. It's frightening how many people and things there are in a man's past that have stopped moving. The living people we've lost in the crypts of time sleep so soundly side by side with the dead that the same darkness envelops them all. As we grow older, we no longer know whom to awaken, the living or the dead.

The Khmer Rogue soldier] screams a loud, shrill cry, that piercing my heart like a stake, and I imagine that this, maybe, is how Pa died. The soldier's head hangs, bobbing up and down like a chicken's... The woman raises her hammer again. I almost feel pity for him. But it is too late to let him go, it is too late to go back. It is too late for my parents and my country.

Many a blessing has been recognized too late.

It is sad, indeed, to see how man wastes his opportunities. How many could be made happy, with the blessings which are recklessly wasted or thrown away.

the irreversibility of things is a kind of death at the heart of life and threatens constantly to steer us into time past- the home of nostalgia, guilt, regret and remorse, the great spoilers of happiness.

quod defles, illud amasti.