Quotes About Regret

One day, when you're happy, try to forgive me.

I was at the door with my suitcase. With my hand on the knob, I looked at him. 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.

For I understood, at the bottom of my heart, that we had never talked, that now we never would.

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.

With my hand on the knob, I looked at him. Then I wanted to beg him to forgive me. But this would have been too great a confession; any yielding in that moment would have locked me forever in that room with him. And in a way this was exactly what I wanted. I felt a tremor go through me, like the beginnings of an earthquake, and felt, for an instant, that I was drowning in his eyes.

But it would make him bitter, it would make her ashamed, for him to see how she was letting herself be wasted—for Paul, who did not love her.

At night I strolled into the Park and took the first whore I met, whom I without many words copulated with free from danger, being safely sheathed. She was ugly and lean and her breath smelt of spirits. I never asked her name. When it was done, she slunk off. I had a low opinion of this practice and resolved to do it no more.

There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.

That's what makes death so hard—unsatisfied curiosity. —BERYL MARKHAM

That's what makes death so hard—unsatisfied curiosity. —BERYL MARKHAM, West with the Night1

he's a maggot-eaten fool and we'll be dead because of him.

God curse me and my lack of wits! Why don't I know what to do easily?

What is past, one cannot change, so each backward glance is a bit of the present slipping away.

She would say that what is past, one cannot change, so each backward glance is a bit of the present slipping away.

Nobody lives forever, nobody stays young long enough. My past seemed like so much excess baggage, my future a series of long goodbyes, my present an empty flask, the last good drink already bitter on my tongue.

Your death defines my life. I want to find the love we never had and explicate it in your name. I want to take your secrets public. I want to burn down the distance between us. I want to give you breath.

He felt sandbagged. Doomsday, Armageddon. Booze begets instant misconduct and regret. He walked to the couch and fell down.

You'd be better served taxing your conscience for those who deserve your regret.

I told lies and wondered where I would go if my own past was all I had left.

Twenty-nine years old and on her third masters degree because she's afraid to go out and meet the world. Sad, isn't it?" Mal sighed. "Tragic.

I'm seventy and in baaaaad fucking shape. I've consumed scads of scotch and sucked three packs a day since I shot out the chute.

It's tough being a dangerous old man by yourself—you've got nothing but memories and no one with the balls to understand them.

America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception. Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight.

I'd rather have the memories and be sad than to not have the memories at all.