Victoria

“She was an historian; the past was her butter and bread. But, she thought as she made her way tot he bathroom and turned on the taps, nothing had readied her for the gentle persistent feeling growing stronger through this month, a steady rain in the back of her mind, that there was something she was missing, that she had failed somehow, that there had been a turn, back there in the road of her life, a trailhead, an opening she'd barrelled right past. Somewhere back there had been the right route, the way through, and she had missed it.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“Once you become aware of your impending death, you have to make a compromise in accepting the loss of the life you wish you could have led and the reality of your imminent death. Sure, there will always be regrets and broken dreams, but you have to go easy on yourself. Over the last few days, I’ve come to realise that there is certain beauty in those regrets, they are proof of having lived. Maybe I will regrets some of my decisions when the moment comes, but that’s ok, No matter how you slice it, life is full of regrets anyway.
I was never able to be myself completely or live my life exactly how I wanted to, I am not even sure if I ever figure out what exactly being myself and living out my dreams really meant. So I guess I am going to die with all those failures and regrets, all those unfulfilled dreams, all the people I’ve never met, all the things I’ve never tasted and all the places I’ve never been. I am taking all that with me to my grave, and I am ok with that. In the end, I am satisfied with who I am and the life I’ve lived, I am just happy to have been here at all.”
― Genki Kawamura, 世界から猫が消えたなら [Sekai kara Neko ga Kietanara]

“There is nothing more heartbreaking than a squandered opportunity, a missed chance. I knew about stuff like that. I'd been young once. So many dreams had been dashed. But I dashed them myself. I wanted to be safe, whole, have a future of certainty. One makes mistakes when there is confusion between having a future at all and having the future one wants.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Death in Her Hands

“…it was during a period he had so much time on his hands that he felt that time had stopped.

How could time have stopped?

‘Because,’ he said, ‘and you will understand this when you are older, sometimes you feel that everything around you has come to an end. You feel that you are completely alone, that time is frozen and that you are invisible. At first, you might feel exhilarated by the sense of freedom, but then you’ll be frightened that you are lost and you will never be able to go back.’

He explained that when he first felt this, he had been isolated and afraid and had prised open his watch case to verify that time was indeed passing. The rhythm of the watch might have been imagined. Sound was not enough, he needed to see and touch it. It was the first time that he had dismantled a mechanism. The turning wheels, ticking each second away, had reassured him.

It was then that he had comprehended the importance of time.”
― Ariana Neumann, When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains