Quotes About Regret

If he could just have one more chance, he'd act like the man he'd always believed himself to be.

I can hardly bear to think of ourselves hugging and crying and making giggly phone calls, like we were in some inane sitcom. We actually discussed names. Names! I want to shout back through the years at myself, "Just because you're pregnant doesn't mean you get a baby, you idiots!

That was the day Alice Mary Love went to the gym and carelessly misplaced a decade of her life.

She felt as though she'd been unforgivably negligent—careless! sloppy!—with the most precious, wonderful gift she'd ever received.

If her mother had been observing this interaction, she'd tell Clementine she was wrong, that she needed to keep talking, to say everything that was on her mind, to communicate, to leave no possibility for misinterpretation. If her father were here, he'd put his finger to his lips and say, "Shh." Clementine settled for two words. "I'm sorry," she said.

Just come back home, Abigail, come back home and stop this. He left us. He left you. You were my reward. Missing out on you was his punishment. How could you choose him?

He has mistakes in his past. I have mistakes in mine. The fact that we actually are each other's mistakes is irrelevant!

Apparently, moving back home was just like joining Facebook, when middle-aged boyfriends came crawling out of the woodwork like cockroaches, suggesting drinks, putting out their nasty feelers for potential affairs.

They lost Olivia at Newport Beach. The panic made Alice hyperventilate. You were meant to be watching her, Nick kept saying. As if that were the point. That Alice had made a mistake. Not that Olivia was missing, but that it was Alice's fault.

And Jeremy, her earnest face crumpled. She looked so embarrassed, I felt like I'd kicked a kitten. She was falling all over herself to apologize.

Instead of remembering grief and devastation, she remembered the terrible injustice of the cheesecake.

Did one act define who you were forever?

They never said sorry. They just threw down their still-loaded weapons, ready for next time.

The word 'sorry' is hardly adequate for my actions.

She realized she felt ashamed, as if by separating from her husband, she'd done something slightly distasteful and seedy,

She would never again lie in bed on a Good Friday morning and relax in the blissful knowledge that there was nothing to do and nowhere to be, because for the rest of her life, there would always, always be something left undone. An unmade confession. An ugly secret.

Like so many things in life, it had seemed like an excellent idea at the time.

Me entran ganas de gritar a la mujer que era yo hace unos años: «¡Quedarte embarazada no significa que vayas a tener un hijo, idiota!».

It made Alice sick with guilt when she thought about what they had put the children through that year. She and Nick had been so young, so full of the earth-shattering importance of their own feelings.

He couldn't understand Rachel's need to wonder what could have been, rather than just accepting that it never would be.

There was no point saying, You mustn't feel responsible. Of course she felt responsible. Denying her regret would be like denying her loss.

So that's how she lived with it. She did it the way so many people lived with their regrets and mistakes. They simply rewrote their stories. Her mother had re-created herself as a devoted mother: as if ballet had been her daughter's favorite extracurricular activity, not her own obsession.

I wish my memories would blur a bit,' Savannah had said, looking into her glass. 'I remember everything. The details never fade.

It was like every fight she'd ever had with her sisters. A wave of rage would sweep her up and carry her high and righteous until she did something embarrassingly excessive. Then it would dump her, splat, leaving her stupid and small.