People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies.
Everyone wanted to believe that endless love was possible. She'd believed in it once too, back when she was eighteen. But she knew that love was messy, just like life. It took turns that people couldn't foresee or even understand, leaving a long trail of regret in its wake. And almost always, those regrets led to the kinds of what if questions that could never be answered.
In the short term, it would make me happy to go play outside. In the long term, it would make me happier to do well at school and become successful. But in the VERY long term, I know which will make better memories.
While you're deep in something, you never say or do what you need to. It's always after the fact, when it's too late, that you realize what you should've said or done.
I looked after that Dudley family for too long, over six years. His daddy would take him to the garage and whip him with a rubber hose-pipe trying to beat the girl out a that boy until I couldn't stand it no more.... I wish to God I'd told John Green Dudley he ain't going to hell. That he ain't no sideshow freak cause he like boys. I wish to God I'd filled his ears with good things like I'm trying to do with Mae Mobley. Instead, I just sat in the kitchen, waiting to put the salve on them hose-pipe welts.
I used to belong to a family unit, with a foster mom and dad and my little sister, Bean, but that's over and I don't want to talk about what happened , or how unfair it was. Not yet. The less said about that the better, because if there's one thing I learned from Ryter it's that you can't always be looking backward or something will hit you from the front.
There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp.
If his decision is correct, he will win the battle, even if it lasts longer than expected. If his decision is wrong, he will be defeated and he will have to start all over again- only this time with more wisdom. But once he has started, a warrior of the light perseveres until the end.
"Empty night, Harry. Didn't your little adventure in the lake teach you a damned thing?" I scowled some more. "Like what?" "Like life is short," he [Thomas] said. "Like you don't know when it's going to end. Like some things, left unsaid, can't ever be said."
I passed under an arch out of that region of slabs and columns, and wandered through the open country; sometimes following the visible road, but sometimes leaving it curiously to tread across meadows where only occasional ruins bespoke the ancient presence of a forgotten road.
I was so ashamed. It made me hard on you, when I was trying to be hard on me. We are blinded by our regrets, Annie. We don't realize who else we punish while we're punishing ourselves.
No, Sully'd decided long ago to abstain from all but the most general forms of regret. He allowed himself the vague wish that things had turned out differently, without blaming himself that they hadn't, any more than he'd blamed himself when his 1-2-3 triple never ran like it should at least once. It didn't pay to second-guess every one of life's decisions, to pretend to wisdom about the past from the safety of the present, the way so many people did when they got older. As if, given a second chance to live their lives, they'd be smarter. Sully didn't know too many people who got noticeably smarter over the course of a lifetime. Some made fewer mistakes, but in Sully's opinion that was because they couldn't go quite so fast. They had less energy, no more virtue; fewer opportunities to screw up, not more wisdom. It was Sully's policy to stick by his mistakes....
"You have to live each hour as if it's your last," she said, "and each day as if you were immortal. When my father grew ill, he had so many regrets. There were so many things he wished he'd done, he told me. He'd always assumed he had more time. That's something I've always carried with me. Why on earth do you think I decided to attempt the flute at such an advanced age? Everyone told me I was too old, that to be truly good at it I had to have started as a child. But that's not the point, really. I don't need to be truly good. I just need to enjoy it for myself. And I need to know I tried."
"L'Horloge Horloge! dieu sinistre, effrayant, impassible, Dont le doigt nous menace et nous dit: "Souviens-toi! Les vibrantes Douleurs dans ton coeur plein d'effroi Se planteront bientot comme dans une cible; Le plaisir vaporeux fuira vers l'horizon Ainsi qu'une sylphide au fond de la coulisse ; Chaque instant te devore un morceau du delice A chaque homme accorde pour toute sa saison. Trois mille six cents fois par heure, la Seconde Chuchote: Souviens-toi! - Rapide, avec sa voix D'insecte, Maintenant dit: Je suis Autrefois, Et j'ai pompe ta vie avec ma trompe immonde! Remember! Souviens-toi, prodigue! Esto memor! (Mon gosier de metal parle toutes les langues.) Les minutes, mortel folatre, sont des gangues Qu'il ne faut pas lacher sans en extraire l'or! Souviens-toi que le Temps est un joueur avide Qui gagne sans tricher, a tout coup! c'est la loi. Le jour decroit; la nuit augmente; souviens-toi! Le gouffre a toujours soif; la clepsydre se vide. Tantot sonnera l'heure ou le divin Hasard, Ou l'auguste Vertu, ton epouse encor vierge, Ou le repentir meme (oh! la derniere auberge!), Ou tout te dira: Meurs, vieux lache! il est trop tard!"