Quotes About Regret

O dead one, why did you die in the springtime? You haven't yet tasted the squash, or the cucumber salad.

I have since wondered, of course, how my life would have been different if I'd decided to stay home that morning. This is what's called the enigma of history, and it can drive you out of your mind if you let it.

You're right, Jottie, but what good is it? Rightness is nothing. You can't live on it. You might as well eat ashes. I glanced at Father, his bloodshot eyes and the stain on his pants. I loved him so. Once more, I tried to explain. This is all we can do; it's all we're allowed. We can't go back. The only thing time leaves for us to decide -- I picked up Father's hand and held it tight-- is whether or not we're going to hate each other.

Once, a great handful of a girl out west told him - I never did love you. […]How mean of her to salve her spit curled conscience by trying to take away their past! In the kitchen he had started to use those very words on Lou - they sprang readily to mind, as wounding words do - but he stopped himself.

For me, writing's the only thing that's always real. I've never regretted a day I wrote a good scene, whatever else I screwed up that day. That's what's fucking real.

For me, writing's the only thing that's always real. I've never regretted a day I wrote a good scene, whatever else I screwed up that day. That's what's fucking real.

I wonder why they never come back," Shay said. "Just to visit." Tally swallowed. "Because we're so ugly, Skinny, that's why.

What is the sound of an eighty-nine-year-old heart breaking?

I looked at him on the bed. He coughed once and a trail of brownish dead blood came out of his mouth and ran down the side of his chin. Then he stopped breathing. And I thought, I'll make sure I never end up here, either.

If only I could have my time again.

There was a pretty young woman I used to see pegging out sheets and I worried that she would grow old there and that no one would know how beautiful she was. And maybe she would die without ever having really lived.

Most firefights go by so fast that acts of bravery or cowardice are more or less spontaneous. Soldiers might live the rest of their lives regretting a decision that they don't even remember making; they might receive a medal for doing something that was over before they even knew they were doing it.

One of God's great oversights is that dogs don't live as long as men, I thought. And that men don't move as fast as dogs.

One of God's greatest oversights is that dogs don't live as long as man.

It's fine to experience regret when we abandon a sunk cost. It's a mistake to stick with one simply because we can't bear the regret.

That truth should be silent I had almost forgot. (Enobarbus)

O good Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me! If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. . . O, I die, Horatio;

Let life be short, else shame will be too long.

I notice the silvery hair at his temples with a tinge of sadness. Why do parents grow old? Life is a castle of lies slowly dismantled by the passage of time. I regret not spending more time looking at the people I love.

I am wed now. My husband is Zane. I'm sorry.

And the pain she'd felt all those years before hadn't been so much that he'd left, but that he didn't love her enough to stay.

I brought my face inches away from hers and whispered, 'If I were strapped like that, I would hate it, too.' And then I felt foolish, for what was the point of empathizing without taking more positive action? I wanted to touch her again but I left and returned to my room feeling impoverished and weak.

I am still jealous that Phoebe's mother came back and mine did not. I miss my mother.

She knew she'd wounded him when he'd least expected it, and her satisfaction lasted until the door had closed behind him. Once he was gone, it ebbed away along with her anger, leaving her with naught but the ashes and embers of a dying hearth fire.