Quotes About Regret

Some things were better lost than found.

Sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. It's what you say when you spill a cup of coffee or throw a gutter ball when you're bowling with the girls in the league. True sorrow is as rare as true love.

I'm the Turtle, son. I made the universe, but please don't blame me for it; I had a belly-ache.

If you can't let go of the past, the mistakes you've made will eat you alive.

You don't have to look back to see those children; part of your mind will see them forever. They are not necessarily the best part of you, but they were once the repository of all you could become.

You just couldn't get hold of the things you had done and turn them right again. Such power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to men and women, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.

Another part of getting older: you forgot what you wanted to remember, and remembered what you wanted to forget.

Not everybody believes in ghosts, but I do. Do you know what they are, Trisha? She had shaken her head slowly. Men and women who can't get over their past . . . That's what ghosts are.

I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend.

I'm not sure anybody ever gets completely over their first love, and that still rankles. Part of me still wants to know what was wrong with me. What I was lacking.

This is how we bring about our own damnation, you know-by ignoring the voice that begs us to stop. To stop while there's still time.

Like the scorpion said to the maiden as she lay dying, 'You knowed I was poison when you picked me up.' 

It's funny how close the past is, sometimes. Sometimes it seems as if you could almost reach out and touch it. Only who really wants to?

In the end we are reduced to saying It seemed like a good idea at the time .

But now the joy is gone and the sadness is back, the sadness feels like something deserved, the price of some not-quite-forgotten betrayal.

Any thoughts of guilt, any feelings of regret, had faded. The desert had baked them out.

Atonement was powerful; it was the lock on the door you closed against the past.

Youth is a wonderful thing," said Mr. Harrigan. "What a shame it's wasted on children.

Our memories have voices, too. Often sad ones that clamor like raised arms in the dark.

We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it's too late.

Don't look back, never look back. How often do people tell themselves that after an experience that is exceptionally good (or exceptionally bad?)? Often, I suppose. And the advice usually goes unheeded. Humans were built to look back; that's why we have tat swivel joint in our necks.

How many times, over how many years, had he—a grown man—asked for the mercy of another chance? He was suddenly so sick of himself, so revolted, that he could have groaned aloud.

She was frightened because she was realizing – too late, too late – that what's done can't be undone, and what's remembered must somehow be lived with ever after. Even of the memories are insane.

If you kill what you love, you're damned.