Quotes About Regret

She sat down next to him, took one of his cigarettes, listened to his apologies. He was distraught, of course: he was just the kind of idiot who could only understand what things meant by doing them first.

She regretted the explanation immediately, but that was because she always regretted everything. And then, after the regret had flared and burned out, she didn't care. He should know, she thought. She wanted him to know. She felt something for somebody, and she'd told him.

Sorry Maureen.

Most days, for the last dozen or so years, I attributed to Charlie, or at least to our breakup, most things that have gone wrong for me. Like: I wouldn't have packed in college; I wouldn't have gone to work in Record and Tape; I wouldn't have had an unsatisfactory personal life. This is the woman who broke my heart, who ruined my life, this woman is single-handedly responsible for my poverty and directionlessness and failure, the woman I dreamed about regularly for a good five years.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that there was this time--maybe it was a day, maybe a few days, I can't remember now--when everything seemed to have come together. And so obviously it was time to go and screw it all up.

If he'd known how long he was going to spend in the airport lounge of his own life, he'd have made different travel arrangements

And if I went back to sleep and slept for forty years and woke up without any teeth to the sound of Melody Radio in an old people's home, I wouldn't worry that much, because the worst of life, i.e., the rest of it, would be over. And I wouldn't even have had to kill myself.

They were expressions of who he was and what he'd become, and he couldn't do anything about any of it, apart from retrace his steps back and back and back, until he was fifteen or ten or three years old, and start again.

The trick, it seems to me, is to stave off regret. That's what the whole thing is about. And we can't stave it off forever, because it is impossible not to make the mistakes that let regret in, but the best of us manage to limp on into our sixties or seventies before we succumb. Me, I made it to about thirty-seven, and David made it to the same age, and my brother gave up the ghost even before that. And I'm not sure that there is a cure for regret. I suspect not.

I can see everything once it's already happened--I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand.

In retrospect, their best chance of doing it this way was against Arsenal, in the game they won 8–2. They only needed another nine that afternoon – and they missed at least fifteen good chances.

Don't you ever have conversations where someone took a wrong turn at some point, and then it goes on and on and it becomes too late to put things right?

I can see everything once it's already happened—I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand.

She regretted the explanation immediately, but that was because she always regretted everything

He knew he had only himself to blame; but it was more or less entirely her fault.

I'm stuck in this pose, this shop-managing pose, forever, because of a few short weeks in 1979 when I went a bit potty for a while. It could be worse, I guess; I could have walked into an army recruiting office, or the nearest Slaughterhouse. But even so, I feel as though I made a face and the wind changed, and now I have to go through life grimacing in this horrible way.

Próbáltam nem gondolni rá. Megtörtént, és kívántam, hogy bárcsak ne történt volna meg, de hát ilyen az élet, nem?

It had never occurred to Sophie that she would be forgiven so readily for her trespasses and she wasn't sure that she liked it. She had refused to visit her dangerously ill father in hospital because her career was more important to her, and the least he could do was judge her. You could get away with anything, it seemed, if you were on the telly.

Of course, I have never had to take that long walk again, and my ears have not burned with quite the same fury, and I have never had to count the packs of cheap cigarettes in order to avoid mocking eyes and floods of tears…not really, not actually, not as such. It just feels that way, sometimes.

Perhaps he would wake up the next morning realizing that he'd made an utter ass of himself, but there were worse animals than the ass. And in London you saw asses wandering around everywhere. Nobody seemed to mind, much. Dennis had spent an awful lot of time not making an ass of himself, and he didn't have anything to show for it. The

And when he stared at the sum total of his crimes on the screen, it seemed to him that they didn't amount to a whole lot. He hadn't killed anyone. He looked again: there must be something missing. Nope. He'd done twenty years for crimes he hadn't committed.

I should have said any of those things. I should have used at least one obscenity. I should certainly have threatened him with violence.

She would go home and marry a man who owned carpet shops, and she would bear his children, and he would take other women to nightclubs, and she would get old and die and hope for better luck next time around.

Hay gente que nunca fue más allá de los sesenta, o que no fue más allá de la guerra, o no más allá de aquella noche en que el grupo en el que tocaban actuaron como teloneros de los Rolling Stones en el Marquee, y luego se han pasado el resto de la vida caminando para atrás; yo nunca llegué a ir más allá de Charlie. Fue con ella cuando me ocurrió lo más importante, las cosas que aún me definen.