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8579158 "I've got a stele we can use. Who wants to do me?" "A regrettable choice of words," muttered Magnus." stele magnus-bane regret Cassandra Clare
ff128ce Don't waste your time in anger, regrets, worries, and grudges. Life is too short to be unhappy. time happy inspiration inspirational-quotes inspire life-quotes living optimistic positive-affirmation positive-life inspiring positive positive-thinking optimism happiness life inspirational anger worry grudge regret Roy T. Bennett
5ba6e24 We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future. struggles motivational life inspirational living-now self-empowerment mistakes regret Steve Maraboli
d6b9ae8 There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth. regret Charles Dickens
315ad6a I wanted to tell her everything, maybe if I'd been able to, we could have lived differently, maybe I'd be there with you now instead of here. Maybe... if I'd said, 'I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything,' maybe that would have made the impossible possible. Maybe, but I couldn't do it, I had buried too much too deeply inside me. And here I am, instead of there. regret Jonathan Safran Foer
aa9ca36 The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did. mistakes regret Jonathan Safran Foer
77befd3 "They send a person who can never stay," she whispered. "Who can never accept my offer of companionship for more than a little while. They send me a hero I can't help ... just the sort of person I can't help falling in love with." ... As I sailed into the lake I realized the Fates really were cruel. They sent Calypso someone she couldn't help but love. But it worked both ways. For the rest of my life I would be thinking about her. She would always be my biggest what if." love fates punishment percy-jackson regret cruel Rick Riordan
8c2b374 If you simply ignored the feeling, you would never know what might happen, and in many ways that was worse than finding out in the first place. Because if you were wrong, you could go forward in your life without ever looking back over your shoulder and wondering what might have been. love message-in-a-bottle wondering nicholas-sparks feeling regret Nicholas Sparks
8a68abc They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other. leaving final regret John Irving
39f009b "Over the last couple of years, the photos of me when I was a kid... well, they've started to give me a little pang or something - not unhappiness, exactly, but some kind of quiet, deep regret... I keep wanting to apologize to the little guy: "I'm sorry, I've let you down. I was the person who was supposed to look after you, but I blew it: I made wrong decisions at bad times, and I turned you into me." regret Nick Hornby
5868743 Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets. life regret Joseph Conrad
01b901e "No trouble ever got fixed late at night," he said. "Midnight is for regrets." trouble regret Holly Black
82eb1de Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me! self regret longing Fernando Pessoa
270e514 regret is mostly caused by not having done anything. poem poetry death life love truth regret regrets Charles Bukowski
1f830c8 The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable. regret Oscar Wilde
8b59221 When you start thinking about what your life was like 10 years ago--and not in general terms, but in highly specific detail--it's disturbing to realize how certain elements of your being are completely dead. They die long before you do. It's astonishing to consider all the things from your past that used to happen all the time but (a) never happen anymore, and (b) never even cross your mind. It's almost like those things didn't happen. Or maybe it seems like they just happened to someone else. To someone you don't really know. To someone you just hung out with for one night, and now you can't even remember her name. living regret remembering nostalgia Chuck Klosterman
be282ee Never regret trusting someone. It proves you have a heart. But if he turns out to be a lying worm ... I'm not going to waste my time crying. Because I am way too fabulous for that. kabra cahill gomez nellie ian regret Jude Watson
81769f2 Hindsight, I think, is a useless tool. We, each of us, are at a place in our lives because of innumerable circumstances, and we, each of us, have a responsibility (if we do not like where we are) to move along life's road, to find a better path if this one does not suit, or to walk happily along this one if it is indeed our life's way. Changing even the bad things that have gone before would fundamentally change who we are, and whether or not that would be a good thing, I believe, it is impossible to predict. So I take my past experiences... and try to regret nothing. -Drizzt Do'urden hope regret R.A. Salvatore
efa31d2 "I get so god damn lonely and sad and filled with regrets some days. It overwhelms me as I'm sitting on the bus; watching the golden leaves from a window; a sudden burst of realisation in the middle of the night. I can't help it and I can't stop it. I'm alone as I've always been and sometimes it hurts.... but I'm learning to breathe deep through it and keep walking. I'm learning to make things nice for myself. To comfort my own heart when I wake up sad. To find small bits of friendship in a crowd full of strangers. To find a small moment of joy in a blue sky, in a trip somewhere not so far away, a long walk an early morning in December, or a handwritten letter to an old friend simply saying "I thought of you. I hope you're well." No one will come and save you. No one will come riding on a white horse and take all your worries away. You have to save yourself, little by little, day by day. Build yourself a home. Take care of your body. Find something to work on. Something that makes you excited, something you want to learn. Get yourself some books and learn them by heart. Get to know the author, where he grew up, what books he read himself. Take yourself out for dinner. Dress up for no one but you and simply feel nice. it's a lovely feeling, to feel pretty. You don't need anyone to confirm it. lovely gratitude happy trying feelings depression joy books learning life-quotes sadness friendship heart heal anxiety-disorder being-happy bus december mental-wellness panic-attacks minimalism breath deep self-care mindfulness healing prose plan breathing growing-up well sky worrying worries emotions panic moment regret learn recovery lonely sad night mental-health letters Charlotte Eriksson
ce0da03 The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after. regret summer Natalie Babbitt
d8eec19 I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen. regret Julian Barnes
234462c For it falls out That what we have we prize not to the worth Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost, Why, then we rack the value, then we find The virtue that possession would not show us While it was ours. love value regret William Shakespeare
3ab4967 She was at that crucial age when a women begins to regret having stayed faithful to a husband she never really loved, when the glowing sunset colors of her beauty offer her one last, urgent choice between maternal and feminine love. At such a moment a life that seemed to have chosen its course long ago is questioned once again, for the last time the magic compass needle of the will hovers between final resignation and the hope of erotic experience. regret Stefan Zweig
a03c112 Regret is counterproductive. It's looking back on a past that you can't change. Questioning things as they occur can prevent regret in the future. past life inspirational questioning regret Colleen Hoover
ec11402 I just wish I'd asked you sooner. We could've had ages . . . months . . . years maybe. . . . ginny-weasley regret J.K. Rowling
96ed5d5 Breath by breath, let go of fear, expectation, anger, regret, cravings, frustration, fatigue. Let go of the need for approval. Let go of old judgments and opinions. Die to all that, and fly free. Soar in the freedom of desirelessness. Let go. Let Be. See through everything and be free, complete, luminous, at home -- at ease. approval buddhist-wisdom tibetan-buddhism freedom fear craving fatigue buddhism expectation regret desire frustration Lama Surya Das
a063230 The moment she was cursed, I lost her. Once it wears off- soon- she will be embarrassed to remember things that she said, things she did, things like this. No matter how solid she feels in my arms, she is made of smoke. life love regret hopeless sad Holly Black
2fb1d2f In my terms, I settled for the realities of life, and submitted to its necessities: if this, then that, and so the years passed. In Adrian's terms, I gave up on life, gave up on examining it, took it as it came. And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse - a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred - about my whole life. All of it. I had lost the friends of my youth. I had lost the love of my wife. I had abandoned the ambitions I had entertained. I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was. reality compromise self-pity remorse regret memory Julian Barnes
e43b6f1 The world changes too fast. You take your eyes off something that's always been there, and the next minute it's just a memory. past regret memory Michel Faber
216a0a6 How quickly he fell; how soon it was over. surprise regret Donna Tartt
fef417f In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. living-in-the-present regret Henry David Thoreau
cf7500e It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister. regret sisters William Faulkner
4406fff I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience. regret pleasure Oscar Wilde
24ee8e2 It is the bungled crime that brings remorse. remorse principles regret P.G. Wodehouse
721341e I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown. mermaid regret T.S Eliot
c4eb88a "The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not." regret E.M. Forster
c5e99c5 But if you never did anything you couldn't undo you'd end up doing nothing at all. risk-taking regret Anne Tyler
0555594 Sometimes you do things you regret, but there's nothing you can do about them. Times change. Doors close behind you. You move on. regret Neil Gaiman
eb4ee65 She knew this man's smile, his gentle ways of love, but not his godlike fury in the storm. She might snare him in a fragile net of music, love and flowers, but, at each departure, he would break forth without, it seemed to her, the least regret. music love night-flight regret Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
78bc10a Why couldn't it just not have happened? Why didn't they have time-travel, why couldn't he go back and stop it happening? Ships that could circumnavigate the galaxy in a few years, and count every cell in your body from light-years off, but he wasn't able to go back one miserable day and alter one tiny, stupid, idiotic, shameful decision... stupidity galaxies jernau-morat-gurgeh time-travel mistakes shame regret Iain M. Banks
505a67a In reality of everyday occurrences I've had to submit to people in order not to lose them. It's less the submission that bothers me, I guess, than how it makes my life miserable. And what happens if I can't forgive myself for making that choice? And what if, in order to keep on living, I have to continue to accept myself? What am I supposed to do? Conclusion: It'd be best if I'm destroyed. The best thing is for me just to vanish. suicide submission regret Natsuo Kirino
be9b8d5 "I had that hole in me, that empty space. I could have lived my life with it, content enough. I wasn't an unhappy man."..................... The tears came now. He watched them drip down her cheeks, wondered if she were even aware they leaked out of her. "She was part of my life. You are my life. If I have a regret, it's that even for an instant you could think otherwise. Or that I allowed you to." -Roarke" -- marriage sadness fights regret J.D. Robb
d48c653 When the last autumn of Dickens's life was over, he continued to work through his final winter and into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation? Would we trade all those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute? time writing death life charles-dickens regret writers old-age Dan Simmons
ac1bea6 ... I have dreams of you too, Mariam jo. I miss you. I miss the sound of your voice, your laughter. I miss reading to you, and all those times we fished together. Do you remember all those times we fished together? You were a good daughter, Mariam jo, and I cannot ever think of you without feeling shame and regret. Regret... When it comes to you, Mariam jo, I have oceans of it. I regret that I did not see you the day you came to Herat. I regret that I did not open the door and take you in. I regret that I did not make you a daughter to me, that I let you live in that place for all those years. And for what? Fear of losing face? Of staining my so-called good name? How little those things matter to me now after all the loss, all the terrible things I have seen in this cursed war. But now, of course, it is too late. Perhaps that is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone. Now all I can do is say that you were a good daughter, Mariam jo, and that I never deserved you. Now all I can do is ask for your forgiveness. So forgive me, Mariam jo. Forgive me, forgive me. Forgive me... values-in-life regret Khaled Hosseini
ead797f No I am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be Am an attendant lord one that will do To swell a progress start a scene or two Advise the prince no doubt an easy tool Deferential glad to be of use Politic cautious and meticulous Full of high sentence but a bit obtuse At times indeed almost ridiculous-- Almost at times the Fool. I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind Do I dare to eat a peach I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us and we drown. loneliness trousers mermaid regret T. S. Eliot
83bc9f8 "I didn't want to hurt him!" Ender cried. "Why didn't he just leave me alone!" regret Orson Scott Card
c56c202 A dead man is the worst enemy alive, I thought. You can't alter his power over you. You can't alter what you love or owe. And it's too late to ask him for his absolution. He has beaten you all ways. enemy regret John le Carré
5c00224 I am fifty years old and I have never known what it is to love. I can write those words, know them to be true, but feel only the regret that a tone-deaf man must feel because he can't appreicate music, a regret less keen because it is for something never known, not for something lost. regret P.D. James
82f852e I stepped closer to him and lowered my voice. 'If you could change one thing, what would it be?' He pulled the sheep pendant from his pocket. A question filled his eyes. I held out my hand. Riley placed it in my palm and I curled my finger around the necklace, pressing the metal into my skin. regret Maria V. Snyder
520b541 I don't pretend to know much about love, but that's how great love comes to an end, not in the flames of passion, but in the silence of regret. regret Joanne Harris
d3258b8 The humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else--grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser. love fifteen humiliation manners etiquette dating regret boys Beverly Cleary
d637741 You cannot see the past that did not happen any more than you can foresee the future. past regret Madeleine L'Engle
a9ff00c "It's unfair." As a rule, life is unfair," I said. Yeah, but I think I did say some awful things." To Dick?" Yeah." I pulled the car over to the shoulder of the road and turned off the ignition. "That's just stupid, that kind of thinking," I said, nailing her with my eyes. "Instead of regretting what you did, you could have treated him decently from the beginning. You could've tried to be fair. But you didn't. You don't even have the right to be sorry." unfairness regret Haruki Murakami
1c8000d For, like desire, regret seeks not to be analysed but to be satisfied. When one begins to love, one spends one's time, not in getting to know what one's love really is, but in making it possible to meet next day. When one abandons love one seeks not to know one's grief but to offer to her who is causing it that expression of it which seems to one the most moving. One says the things which one feels the need of saying, and which the other will not understand, one speaks for oneself alone. I wrote: 'I had thought that it would not be possible. Alas, I see now that it is not so difficult.' I said also: 'I shall probably not see you again;' I said it while I continued to avoid shewing a coldness which she might think affected, and the words, as I wrote them, made me weep because I felt that they expressed not what I should have liked to believe but what was probably going to happen. spite regret Marcel Proust
2455573 Nothing helps a man to reform like thinking of the past with regret. the-past regret Fyodor Dostoyevsky
c4216b2 "You know," she murmured, "we're all heading straight to hell." "Yes," said Masako, giving her a bleak look. "It's like riding downhill with no brakes." "You mean, there's no way to stop?" "No, you stop all right - when you crash." -- mistakes trouble regret hell Natsuo Kirino
adabc67 ...alone in this city, alone on this sea. The days were strewn about him, he was a drunkard of days. He had achieved nothing. He had his life--it was not worth much--not like a life that, though ended, had truly been something. If I had had courage,he thought, if I had had faith. We preserve ourselves as if that were important, and always at the expense of others. We hoard ourselves. We succeed if they fail, we are wise if they are foolish, and we go onward, clutching, until there is no one--we are left with no companion save God. In whom we do not believe. Who we know does not exist. loneliness faith selfishness regret James Salter
6d42662 "Why?" I asked him tiredly. "What would it have changed? What could you possibly have said that would have made a difference?" "That I was your brother, Harry," he said. "That I loved you. That I knew a few things about denying the dark parts of your nature. And that we would get through it." He put his elblows on his knees and rested his forehead on his hands. "That we'd figure it out. That you weren't alone." Stab. Twist. He was right. It was just that simple." sweet family-love not-alone regret Jim Butcher
baa44f7 I was wrong when I said that I did not regret the past. I do regret it; I weep for that past love which can never return. Who is to blame, I do not know. Love remains, but not the old love; its place remains, but it all wasted away and has lost all strength and substance; recollections are still left, and gratitude; but... loss love regret Leo Tolstoy
20700b3 Our lives are marked and shaped by our regrets. Things we all want to take back and can't. In a perfect world, we would never hurt the ones we love or cause hurt to befall them. But the world isn't perfect and neither are we regret Sherrilyn Kenyon
7863e1f Time doesn't run backward, you know, and things that have been done can't be undone, no matter how hard you wish. time regret Mary Downing Hahn
53c5665 The theatre is a tragic place, full of endings and partings and heartbreak. You dedicate yourself passionately to something, to a project, to people, to a family, you think of nothing else for weeks and months, then suddenly it's over, it's perpetual destruction, perpetual divorce, perpetual adieu. It's like , it's a koan. It's like falling in love and being smashed over and over again.' 'You do, then, fall in love.' 'Only with fictions, I love players, but actors are so ephemeral. And then there's waiting for the perfect part, and being offered it the day after you've committed yourself to something utterly rotten. The remorse, and the envy and the jealousy. An old actor told me if I wanted to stay in the trade I had better kill off envy and jealousy at the start. theatre jealousy love remorse regret hamlet theater Iris Murdoch
b949655 "Regrets are useless, " the Fool replied. "All you can do is start from where you are." truth useless regret Robin Hobb
dd3f569 Aw, Poke, you poor, kind, decent, stupid girl. You saved me and I let you down. poke regret Orson Scott Card
89996c1 There's no fear or regret but no elation or sense of triumph either. It's just a job that had to be done. triumph regret Irvine Welsh
bdcd24d I've lived the life of a man without teeth, he thought about it. A life of a man without teeth. I've never bitten, I've been waiting, keeping myself for later - and now I've just ascertained that I don't have teeth anymore. life regret Jean-Paul Sartre
d138372 Despite my pain, I felt not the regret of an ending, but the foreboding of a beginning. pain endings beginnings-and-endings regret Robin Hobb
a83e087 In my dream, people apologized for things that were about to happen, and lit candles by inhaling. sorrow remorse regret Jonathan Safran Foer
d87de50 You know, sometimes it's nice to just have someone to blame, even if it has to be yourself, even if it doesn't make sense. experiences feelings memories difficulty challenges forgetting forgiveness mistakes regret Lois Lowry
22bad6f lys 'shq~ mn 'n yqr`k lndm w 'nt dhw ymn regret Naguib Mahfouz
115af1b No such thing as time travel, he'd rumbled patiently, once. Only live with what you've done, and try in the future to do what you're happy to live with. zen regret Richard K. Morgan
b2b4a24 He died at the wrong time, when there was much to be clarified and established. They hadn't even started to be grown-ups together. There was this piece of heaven, this little girl he'd carried around the shop on his shoulders; and then one day she was gone, replaced by a foreigner, an uncooperative woman he didn't know how to speak to. Being so confused, so weak, so in love, he chose strength and drove her away from himself. The last years he spent wondering where she'd gone, and slowly came to realise that she would never return, and that the husband he'd chosen for her was an idiot. father-daughter parents regret Hanif Kureishi
e788953 It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse. That bungled goodbye hurts me to this day. saying-goodbye regret Yann Martel
46c6172 This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my meditations. suicide mourning depression empathy sadness music heartbreak heart love mournful ruminating tradgedy lost-love thinking regret lost nostalgia Joseph Conrad
3bd5729 Purification and redemption are such recurrent themes in ritual because there is a clear and ubiquitous need for them: we all do regrettable things as a result of our own circumstances, and new rituals are frequently invented in response to new circumstances. purify themes redemption regret ritual Susan Cain
217736e More tears rushed from the depths of her tortured soul. ... The losses piled up. regret Karen Kingsbury
5766731 I'll go from world to world until I find a time and place where you can come awake in safety. And I'll tell your story to my people, so that perhaps in time the can forgive you, too. The way that you've forgiven me. life love truth forgivness ender comprehension genius regret crazy Orson Scott Card
7c1c6d3 As a man gets older, his regrets changes. Especially when he's gotten into the Scotch. men wisdom scotch regret Robert Crais
f8a91e2 She said once that time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life, returning again and again to the events that mark me in the eyes of my more astute colleagues, as bearing all the characteristics of the classic melancholic. mourning grief depression family friendship professional the-past melancholy reflection regret remember dead sad lost mental-illness Dennis Lehane
55417ea I wander cowboy sidewalks of wood, wearing a too-small hat, filled with remorse for the many lives I failed to lead. pathetic-people reflection-on-life remorse regret failure George Saunders
000670f When you have no future, you live in the past. regret John Grisham
6c0779b Regret is a waste of time. live waste-of-time regret James Patterson
604e547 I may have had moments of regret in my life, but you know, they wouldn't add up to an hour. life regret Emma Donoghue
2609989 And then the queen wept with all her heart. Not for the cruel and greedy man who had warred and killed and savaged everywhere he could. But for the boy who had somehow turned into that man, the boy whose gentle hand had comforted her childhood hurts, the boy whose frightened voice had cried out to her at the end of his life, as if he wondered why he had gotten lost inside himself, as if he realized that it was too, too late to get out again. grief greed death saddest-thing the-princess-and-the-bear lost-innocence the-end too-late growing-up regret lost Orson Scott Card
6dbf94d Sometimes, without effort, you live in the moment. You don't regret the past or worry about the future, and in that moment everything flashes before your eyes , a clear snapshot of what has to be done, and everything pauses. photography time dream future past imagination life snapshot kodak-moment pause clear clarity worry moment regret nostalgia Rebecca McNutt
350656b I would have to go back into my past and deal with Adrian. My philosopher friend, who gazed on life and decided that any responsible, thinking individual should have the right to reject this gift that had never been asked for - and whose noble gesture re-emphasised with each passing decade the compromise and littleness that most lives consist of. 'Most lives': my life. suicide regret Julian Barnes
f54b38a For it is now to us itself ancient; and yet its maker was telling of things already old and weighted with regret, and he expended his art in making keen that touch upon the heart which sorrows have that are both poignant and remote. loss sorrow writing beowulf poignant regret J.R.R. Tolkien
bed81f0 Each dark conjecture came and for a moment settled like a vulture on Bond's shoulder and croaked into his ear that he had been a blind fool. folly foolishness regret guilt Ian Fleming
837ba01 His heart missed a beat and never regretted the lovely loss. loss love regret Vladimir Nabokov
eeb8a3e Too late... everything's always too late. maurice regret E.M. Forster
0f940a7 It was the blue-tinged taste of a regret so deep you could never plumb its depths. It was the victory at Rajal that never came, it was his brother walking away down the long dark wood corridor, it was a life he might have had in Yhelteth if disgust and fury had not sent him away in disgrace instead. It was the slaves he could not free, the screaming women and children of Ennishmin he could not save, the piled-up, silent dead and the smashed-in, ruined homes. It was every wrong decision he'd ever made, every path he'd failed to walk, fanned out and held up for him to understand, and it . regret Richard K Morgan
062172f "I remembered that once, as a child, I was filled with wonder, that I had marveled at tri-folded science projects, encyclopedias, and road atlases. I left much of that wonder somewhere back in Baltimore. Now I had the privilege of welcoming it back like a long-lost friend, though our reunion was laced with grief; I mourned over all the years that were lost. The mourning continues. Even today, from time to time, I find myself on beaches watching six-year-olds learn to surf, or at colleges listening to sophomores slip from English to Italian, or at cafes seeing young poets flip though "The Waste Land," or listening to the radio where economists explain economic things that I could've explored in my lost years, mourning, hoping that I and all my wonder, my long-lost friend, have not yet run out of time, though I know that we all run out of time, and some of us run out of it faster." mourning mortality wonder meaning wasted-time inertia purpose regret knowledge Ta-Nehisi Coates
d518a23 "Jesus, Dolores, you've got to get yourself together. You've got responsibilities. Think about those sometimes - okay? - and get your fucking head right." Those were the last words his wife heard from him. He'd closed the door and walked down the stairs, paused on the last step. He thought of going back. He thought of going back up the stairs and into the apartment and somehow making it right. Or, if not right, at least softer. Softer. That would have been nice." shutter-island regret Dennis Lehane
987f803 The soft strings of the lute rippled with memories, and the maid's lilting voice made Mary sigh as she closed her eyes. She fell asleep filled with sadness, but without regret. regret Margaret George
96a54d0 This is one of those rare moments when, while doing that which it is one's duty to do, one feels something which disconcerts one, and which would dissuade one from proceeding further; one persists, it is necessary, but conscience, though satisfied, is sad, and the accomplishment of duty is complicated with a pain at the heart. duty regret Victor Hugo
f432055 I owed the greater apology, but at the same time I knew that was done was done, that no matter what I said now I would never be able to make it right. regret Jhumpa Lahiri
94c5b32 I'm afraid that the gift of visiting the past is all that we have. We can revisit it, but only as it happened. revisiting-the-past karen-essex mina-harker regret Karen Essex
5c59538 "Had I done it sooner, perhaps he might have lived. He was a man of courage and good heart, a proud man. Now he is dead. I saved the signal to use in a worthy cause, and when I found one it was wasted." "Wasted?" answered Fflewddur. "I think not. Since you did your best and didn't begrudge using it, I shouldn't call it wasted at all." worth regret morals values Lloyd Alexander
aff8418 She could not picture it. Herself riding on the subway or streetcar, caring for new horses, talking to new people, living among hordes of people every day who were not Clark. A life, a place, chosen for that specific reason--that it would not contain Clark. The strange and terrible thing coming clear to her about that world of the future, as she now pictured it, was that she would not exist there. She would only walk around, and open her mouth and speak, and do this and do that. She would not really be there. And what was strange about it was that she was doing all this, she was riding on this bus in the hope of recovering herself. As Mrs. Jamieson might say--and as she herself might with satisfaction have said-- . With nobody glowering over her, nobody's mood infecting her with misery. But what would she care about? How would she know that she was alive? While she was running away from him--now--Clark still kept his place in her life. But when she was finished running away, when she just went on, what would she put in his place? What else--who else--could ever be so vivid a challenge? inertia regret Alice Munro
a656537 Sometimes people get angry and do things they shouldn't. Things they regret. regret Mary Alice Monroe
e2ba9a3 ...I've returned and I look around me and think, I've missed my life. While I was off and alone, it went on here, without me, and I'm forever doomed to be a stranger in my own home. truth stranger return cost evaluate look result think home regret Robin Hobb
d447005 She cried aloud, with a great mourning cry for all that she had never known in this life, and the agony of a bereavement unguessed till this moment. cry regret Marion Zimmer Bradley
ab9a6bc I was dying. And I had never been enough for anything. regret Robin Hobb
68b5e49 Who would awaken the past? It shines like a sunrise And cuts like a fine blade. regret sunrise Juliet Marillier
a5604d6 After that came her biggie: a triple murder--her dealer, the dealer's sister, and the dealer's sister's boyfriend. Reading that made me feel a little funny that we'd fucked and I'd loved her. humor regret George Saunders
8f45b5e "They say, the sun brings life to the world. The sun will rise and look is it not a corpse? Everything is dead and there are corpses everywhere. Just people and around them silence__that is the world! "Love one another"__who said that? Whose command is that? The pendulum swings unfeelingly, antagonistically. It's two o'clock at night. Her slippers are standing by her bed, as if waiting for her.... No, seriously, when they take her away tomorrow, what shall I do?" life-lessons love death-of-a-loved-one regret Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3a91b1d Fool, there is no sense in trying to play that game with the past. Here is where we are today, and we can only make our moves from here. future past move sense today play regret Robin Hobb
9549ae9 And I am nothing if not a stupid, stupid man. stupidity regret Paul Auster
b508586 you can't change the past,Aunt Lou used to say.Oh, but I wanted to;that was the one thing I really wanted to do regret Margaret Atwood
27301c5 By trying to export myself into a place that didn't fully exist I asked works of art to bear my expectation that they could be better than life, that they could redeem life. In fact, I believe they are, and do. My life is dedicated to that belief. But still, I asked too much of them: I asked them also to be both safer than life and fuller, a better family. That they couldn't give. At the depths I'd plumb them, so many perfectly sufficient works of art would become thin, anemic. I sucked the juice out of what I loved until I found myself in a desert, sucking rocks for water. reality truth too-much-affection too-much-of-a-good-thing what-you-love regret obsession Jonathan Lethem
224b38c 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. regret Nick Hornby
3c177ff Nor did he think of Celia any more, though he could sometimes remember having dreamt of her. If only he had been able to think of her, he would not have needed to dream of her. love regret Samuel Beckett
86b39fd Deployed upon that plain they moved in a constant elision, ordained agents of the actual dividing out the world which they encountered and leaving what had been and what would never be alike extinguished on the ground behind them. present past the-west regret Cormac McCarthy
dfa5077 Momentarily drained of lust, he stares at the remembered contortions to which it has driven him. His life seems a sequence of grotesque poses assumed to no purpose, a magic dance empty of belief. the two thoughts come at once, in one slow wave. He feels underwater, caught in chains of transparent slime, ghosts of the urgent ejaculations he has spat into the mild bodies of women. His fingers on his knees pick at persistent threads. rabbit-angstrom hospital lust regret despair John Updike
81247f0 She could, she thinks, have entered a different life. She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself. fantasy-life life-worth-living exciting-life ennui resignation regret Michael Cunningham
6d70282 "Nothin's what it seems, drow!" Bruenor declared. "Nothin'! Ye try to follow what ye know, ye know? But then ye find that ye know not what ye thought ye knowed! Thought a dog'd be tastin' good - looked good enough - but now me belly's cursing me every move!" regret R.A. Salvatore
77e108f But it's not easy, realising how we fucked it all up. And that turns out to be the hardest thing to live with, not the regret or the fear, but the realisation that the edge is so close to where we live. fear fucking-up regret Jess Walter
ff9b453 There's a time in your life when you have to stop looking back and start looking forward because otherwise you're going to walk down the road one day and bump into a lamppost. But it's not easy. regret Anna Maxted
2e6fa8f "Have a drink?" " I don't need it," said Halloway. "But someone inside me does." "Who?" The boy I once was, thought Halloway, who runs like the leaves down the sidewalk autumn nights. But he couldn't say that. So he drank, eyes shut, listening to hear if that thing inside turned over again, rustling in the deep bons that were stacked for burning but never burned." youth alcohol drink regret longing Ray Bradbury
a956a82 And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse--a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred--about my whole life. life self-pity the-sense-of-an-ending remorse regret self-hatred Julian Barnes
fb4879f They had never been at peace together, they two; and now he felt himself drawn downward into the strange mysterious depths of her tranquillity. loss loss-of-love regret Edith Wharton
490ae80 He thought of all the ways that so many people felt about life. Life was a matter of regret--how could it be anything else? We knew that we would lose the things we loved; we knew that sooner or later we would lose everything, and beyond that was a darkness, a state of non-being that we found hard to imagine, let alone accept. life regret Alexander McCall Smith
b4c0862 There will be days you wish you'd never done it. And those will be the good times, when it's only days of regret and not months. months regret Gillian Flynn
3fff438 "Geraldine keeps her eyes trained on him as she slowly reaches into her purse, wrapping her fingers around her gun. "...Callo, I'm so sorry that your life ended up this way," she sighs as she gets out of her side of the car, her feet burning from the cold as her high heels sink into the fallen snow. "Aren't you scared?" "I'm you, Geraldine... I fell into the same trap as you, anyway," Callo answers. His large eyes are shining with tears, but he doesn't seem afraid in the least. "...The dead don't feel anything, you know... not even guilt or regret. So, what is there to be afraid of?" depression emotion fear death friendship apology forlornness usurer high-heels forlorn purse revolver lonliness friend trap gun tears regret kill depressed dead guilt die eyes dying mental-illness Rebecca McNutt
5387d1e Lonely cries, and she was lonely, not for friends but for a time that hadn't been violated. time violation regret Jeanette Winterson
369b352 If Tony hadn't been fearful, hadn't counted on the approval of others for his own self-approval . . . and so on, through a succession of hypotheticals leading to the final one: so, for instance, if Tony hadn't been Tony. in-another-life what-if the-sense-of-an-ending julian-barnes regret sad Julian Barnes
08cf33b Why did I think that this improvisation could never end? If I had seen that it could, what would I have done differently? What would he? second-chanc impermanence regret Joan Didion
95d2033 His strike force stood around him, craning their necks, in awe of the massive emptiness all around. He was almost sorry to pull his attention back to the small, vaguely intimate necessities of violence. violence war space regret James S.A. Corey
ad52276 On each piece of paper I found addresses, telephone numbers, memos of various rendezvous made and kept--or perhaps not kept--people met and remembered, or perhaps not remembered, hopes probably not fulfilled: certainly not fulfilled, or I would not have been standing on that street corner. unfulfilled james-baldwin melancholy regret sad James Baldwin
96c859b The answers hardly seemed of consequence. Not much did. I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen. life looking-back meaningless passive the-sense-of-an-ending regret Julian Barnes
180d3a4 Robert had taught him to keep his thoughts in the present or near future, for as Robert had told him, To dwell in the past is to live in regret. wisdom regret Raymond E. Feist
bb37f80 They had both wanted it to happen and they both wished it had not; what mattered now was that nobody else should ever know. regret Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
c6a5e63 It would be convenient if one could redesign the past, change a few things here and there, like certain acts of outrageous stupidity, but if one could do that, the past would always be in motion. It would never settle down finally to days of solid marble. time-travel regret Richard Brautigan
9030610 They were already out of her lands, and in another day Yorkshire would be behind them altogether. By the end of the week she'd be in London, resuming her life as if this trip had never happened. Three or four months from now, Harry, acting as her land steward, might write to ask if she wanted him to present his report on her lands in person. And she, having just returned from another soiree, might turn the letter over in her hand and muse, Harry Pye. Why, I once lay in his arms. I looked up into his illuminated face as he joined his flesh with mine, and I was alive. She might toss the letter on her desk and think, But that was so long ago now and in a different place. Perhaps it was only a dream. She might think that. George closed her eyes. Somehow she knew that there would never come a day when Harry Pye was not her first memory when she woke and her last thought as she drifted into sleep. She would remember him all the days of her life. Remember and regret. loss love georgina harry regret remember Elizabeth Hoyt
681406f His problem consisted of a burning wish not to have done the things he'd done. the-corrections jonathan-franzen shame regret Jonathan Franzen
19a29be It does no good to regret the past... yet regret remains just the same. regret regrets Sang-Sun Park
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