Quotes About Regret

I tell her how sorry I am, and as I speak my words feel inadequate and pathetic.

I dreamt of Eric, in his Filas, chilling against his sister's car. Then I dreamt of him on the ground, wanting to talk, but with nothing left to say.

What I had done to Jesse, well, that was something else. In a way, it's like I was burying my old self in that pit. The person that I'd been before I'd looked into a man's eyes and shot him dead. The person that I was now, the delicate newborn killer that Jesse made me, needed the slow thoughtless shoveling like an insect still wet from metamorphosis needs time to dry its wings and figure out how to work its brand new form.

Dean had never quite imagined his life might end like this. Naked in a Tijuana brothel with an eighty-year-old woman dressed like Janine from Spinal Tap sizing up his junk and looking distinctly unimpressed. He really wished the room wasn't so heavily air-conditioned.

Daß es kein Unglück gibt außer dem, nicht zu leben. Und am Ende keine Verzweiflung außer der, nicht gelebt zu haben.

Harold Bloom weeps for me.

Live as you will wish to have lived when you are dying.

Live as you will have wished to have lived when you are dying.

Das hat mich nicht traurig gemacht, damals, aber irgendwie hat es das doch. Ich weiß auch nicht wieso.

not far beneath the surface appearance of happy, liberated emerging adult sexual adventure and pleasure lies a world of hurt, insecurity, confusion, inequality, shame, and regret.

Knowing he couldn't go back to

I am not glad she is dead, but I am not sorry she is gone.

It is a terrible thing to find the love of your life.... You know too well what you're missing when it's gone.

I couldn't have imagined how much more there was to lose.

It is a terrible thing to find the love of your life, Christina, she says. You know too well what you're missing when it's gone.

She has learned that she can control her emotions by thinking of her chest cavity as an enormous box with a chain lock. She opens the box and stuffs in any stray unmanageable feelings, any wayward sadness or regret, and clamps it shut.

It's a bitter nostalgia from a moment not yet passed.

Now Molly takes the knife and pokes it through the tape of the box Vivian has chosen: 1929–1930. Vivian, sitting on a wooden chest, waits patiently. After opening the flaps, Molly lifts out a mustard-colored coat, and Vivian scowls. "Mercy sake," she says. "I can't believe I saved that coat. I always hated it.

Eighty-two years later, the sound of her crying still haunts me. If only I had paid closer attention to why she was crying instead of simply trying to quiet her. If only I had paid closer attention.

I didn't follow my heart, Angela. I followed my head. And when it comes down to it, the longing in the heart lingers. Do you want to know the truth?" I nod, though I'm not sure I do. "I wish I had not left. I did what I thought would save me from heartache, but in many ways it kept me from living.

You could be my daughter, you know," Mr. Byrne tells me. "Your name—Dorothy . . . we always said we'd give to our own child someday, but alas it didn't come to pass. And here you are, red hair and all.

Feeling around in the bag, he said, "Aw, shit. I meant to get you a chain to clip these on." He patted her knee. "Don't worry about it. That'll be part two." Two weeks later, coming home late one night, he lost control of his car, and that was that. Within six months, Molly was living somewhere else. It would be years until she bought herself that chain.

I did not love him the way I loved Dutchy: beyond reason. Maybe you only get one of those in a lifetime.

I remember [Mommie Dearest] always said, "Send me flowers while I'm alive. They won't do me a damn bit of good after I'm dead." My mother died on the morning of May 10, 1977.