Quotes About Regret

Everything that she had wanted for Lydia, which Lydia had never wanted but had embraced anyway. A dull chill creeps over her. Perhaps—and this thought chokes her—that had dragged Lydia underwater at last.

This was what would haunt Mrs. McCullough most: that Mirabelle hadn't cried out when Bebe had reached into the crib and lifted her up and taken her away. Despite everything—despite the homemade food and the toys and the late nights and the love, so much love, more love than Mrs. McCullough could have imagined possible—despite it all, she still had felt Bebe's arms were a safe place, a place she belonged.

He didn't know what exactly he wanted to say— I'm sorry, I didn't mean it —only the ever-deepening regret at how things were turning out between them, the desperate and impossible desire to go back to the way things had been.

Le conditionnel passé, le temps des opportunités manquées.

Later, when they look back on this last evening, the family will remember almost nothing. So many things will be pared away by the sadness to come.

Was she sad? She was angry. Furious at the smallness of her mother's life.

Looking out over the lake, she could not know that in three months she would be at its bottom.

We don't burn our books, she says. We pulp them. Much more civilized, right? Mash them up, recycle them into toilet paper. Those books wiped someone's rear end a long time ago. Oh, says Bird. So that's what happened to his mother's books. All those words

The hypothetical past perfect, the tense of missed chances.

A million little chances to change the future. They should never have married. He should never have touched her. She should have turned around, stepped out of his office into the hallway, walked away. He sees with utter clarity: none of this was supposed to happen. A mistake.

What had they missed that they should have seen? What small gesture, forgotten, might have changed everything? They will pick it down to the bones, wondering how this had all gone so wrong, and they will never be sure.

Everything she had dreamed for herself faded away, like fine mist on a breeze. She could not remember now why she thought it had all been possible.

Na maioria dos casos, toda a gente merece mais do que uma oportunidade. Todos nós fazemos coisas que lamentamos de vez em quando e que teremos de levar para sempre dentro de nós.

Pearl, my darling," her mother said. "I'm so sorry. It's time to go." She took Mia's hand, and Pearl, uprooted, came free and followed her mother back to the car.

I think if she'd been more careful this whole thing could've been avoided," he said stiffly. "I mean, use a condom. How hard is that? A buck at the drugstore and this whole thing would never have happened.

But those words had haunted James. How they must have wound around his heart, binding tighter over the years, slicing into the flesh.

This baby name May Ling. Please take this baby and give her a better life. That first night, when the baby had finally fallen asleep in their laps, Mr. and Mrs. McCullough spent two hours flipping through the name dictionary. It had not occurred to them, then or at any point until now, to regret the loss of her old name.

My mother just thinks I should marry someone more like me, then brushed it away, like dust onto the floor. But those words had haunted James. How they must have wound around his heart, binding tighter over the years, slicing into the flesh. He had hung his head like a murderer, as if his blood were poison, as if he regretted that their daughter had ever existed.

I could have done that, Marilyn thought, and the words clicked into place like puzzle pieces, shocking her with the rightness. The hypothetical past perfect, the tense of miss chances.

She'll pause over a peppermint, still twisted in cellophane, and wonder if it's significant, if it had meant something to Lydia, if it was just overlooked and discarded. She knows she'll find no answers. For now, she watches the figure in the bed, and her eyes fill with tears. It's enough.

The hypothetical past perfect, the tense of missed chances. Tears dripped down her chin. No, she thought suddenly. I could do that.

Later she would wonder if this had made her miss her chance, or if she had ever had a chance at all.

Maybe she didn't know what she was giving up until afterward. Maybe once she saw the baby she changed her mind.

When are you ever done with the story of someone you love?....Who ever thinks, recalling the face of the one they loved who is gone: yes, I looked at you enough, I loved you enough, we had enough time, any of this was enough?