Quotes About Regret

I would sit snug in this giant couch inside this giant apartment in the dark thinking, "how stupid was I? I made money when it was easy and then I lost it all.

And with every step I took it became more impossible for me to turn back. And my mind was empty—or it was as though my mind had become one enormous, anaesthetized wound. I thought only, One day I'll weep for this. One of these days I'll start to cry.

One of the most terrible, most mysterious things about a life is that a warning can be heeded only in retrospect: too late.

Then I wanted to beg him to forgive me. But this would have been too great a confession; any yielding at that moment would have locked me forever in that room with him. And in a way this was exactly what I wanted.

But it's not possible to forget anybody you were that hung up on, who was that hung up on you. You can't forget anything that hurt so badly, went so deep, and changed the world forever. It's not possible to forget anybody you've destroyed.

No matter how it seems now, I must confess: I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again. And this might be a great relief if I did not also know that, when the knife has fallen, Giovanni, if he feels anything will feel relief.

We're getting old, he thought, and it damn sure didn't take long.

one day I'll weep for this. One of these days I'll start to cry.

When he was dead I realized that I had hardly ever spoken to him. When he had been dead a long time I began to wish I had. It seems to be typical of life in America, where opportunities, real and fancied, are thicker than anywhere else on the globe, that the second generation has no time to talk to the first.

No matter how it seems now, I must confess: I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again.

The woman on the bed was old, her life was fading as the mist rose. She thought of her mother as already in the grave; and she would not let herself be strangled by the hands of the dead. "I'm going, Ma," she said. "I got to go.

a boy with an unspeakable past was a man with an unendurable future. He was good to look at, good to dance with, probably good to sleep with: but he was no longer good for love.

She thought of herself as his strength; in a world of shadows, the indisputable reality to which he could always repair. And, again, for all that had come, she could not regret this. She had tried, but she had never been and was not now, even tonight, truly sorry. Where, then, was her repentance? And how could God hear her cry?

It's painful, sometimes, to look back on a life and wonder if anything you did could have made any difference. So much is lost; and what's lost is lost forever. Was it destined to be lost, or could we have saved it?

No matter how it seems now, I must confess: I loved him. I do not think I will ever love anyone like that again.

I ain't ashamed of it – I'm ashamed of you – you done made me feel a shame I ain't never felt before. I shamed before my God – to let somebody make me cheap, like you done done.

this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them...

No. It would help if I were able to feel guilty. But the end of innocence is also the end of guilt. No matter how it seems now, I must confess: I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again. And this might be a great relief if I did not also know that, when the knife has fallen, Giovanni, if he feels anything will feel relief.

It would help if I were able to feel guilty. But the end of innocence is also the end of guilt. No matter how it seems now, I must confess: I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again.

I have not thought of that boy—Joey—for many years; but I see him quite clearly tonight. It was several years ago. I was still in my teens, he was about my age, give or take a year. He was a very nice boy, too, very quick and dark, and always laughing. For a while he was my best friend. Later, the idea that such a person could have been my best friend was proof of some horrifying taint in me. So I forgot him. But I see him very well tonight.

I am sure that if any of the girls we whistled at that day had shown any signs of responding the ocean would not have been deep enough to drown our shame and terror.

That was how I met Giovanni. I think we connected the instant that we met. And remain connected still, despite the fact that Giovanni will be rotting soon in unhallowed ground near Paris. Until I die there will be those moments, moments seeming to rise up out of the ground like Macbeth's witches, when his face will come before me, that face in all its changes, when the exact timbre of his voice and tricks of his speech will nearly burst my ears, when his smell will overpower my nostrils.

Rufus thought, But it's not possible to forget anybody you were that hung up on, who was that hung up on you. You can't forget anything that hurt so badly, went so deep, and changed the world forever. It's not possible to forget anybody you've destroyed.

it became a stranger's face—or it made me so guilty to look on him that I wished it were a stranger's face. Not all my memorizing had prepared me for the metamorphosis which my memorizing had helped to bring about.