Quotes About Regret

I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time... ...why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future.

I looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for.

I try not to remember the life that I didn't want to lose but lost and have to remember

If I'd been someone else in a different world I'd've done something different, but I was myself and the world was the world, so I was silent.

She wrote, I wish I could be a girl again, with a chance to live my life again. I have suffered so much more than I needed to. And the joys I have felt have not always been joyous. I could have lived differently.

And here I am, instead of there. I'm sitting in this library, thousands of miles from my life, writing another letter I know I won't be able to send, no matter how hard I try and how much I want to. How did that boy making love behind that shed become this man writing this letter at this table?

I regret how much I believed in the future.

It is better to lose than never to have had.

It's better to lose than to never have had.

I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.

In the end I was the clay and she was the sculptor, I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I'd had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her.

It's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I'd had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her.

I think about all of the things I've done, Oskar. And all of the things I didn't do. The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did.

If I'd been somone else in a different world I'd've done something different, but I was myself and the world was the world, so I was silent.

Everything else happened - why not the things that could have?

creating a trail of things i wasn't able to tell you

And the general shot my sister. I could not look at her, but I remember the sound of when she hit the ground. I hear that sound when things hit the ground still. Anything.' If I could, I would make it so nothing ever hit the ground again.

Ich versuche mich an alles zu erinnern, was ich getan habe, Oskar. Und alles, was ich nicht getan habe. Die Fehler, die ich begangen habe, sind mir egal. Aber was ich nie getan habe, kann ich auch nicht zurücknehmen.

I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life [...]

The horse at the bottom of the river, shrouded by the sunken night sky, closed its heavy eyes. The prehistoric ant in Yankel's ring, which had lain motionless in the honey-colored amber since long before Noah hammered the first plank, hid its head between its many legs, in shame.

My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.

She took the posters downtown that afternoon. She filled a rolling suitcase with them ... she took a stapler. And a box of staples. And hope. I think of those things. The paper, the stapler, the staples, the tape, the hope. It makes me sick. Physical things. Forty years of loving someone becomes staples and hop.

It's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we only have one life

I ripped the page from my book - I don't speak, I'm sorry. - and used it to dry her cheeks, my explanation and apology ran down her face like mascara.