What I'm certain I don't want is to find myself someday in a new century, an old bitter woman looking back, wishing that right now I'd had more nerve.

It is a bad idea to live too long. Few carry it off well.

No looking back. Life goes one way only, and whatever opinions you hold about the past having nothing to do with anything but your own damn weakness. Nothing changes what already happened. It will always have happened. You either let it break you down or you don't.

She always carried a book, though, in case she needed to read a few pages to avoid unwanted conversation.

That's not a thing any of us are granted. To go back. Wipe away what later doesn't suit us and make it the way we wish it. You just go on

There was a redemption of some kind, he believed, in such complete fulfillment of a desire so long deferred.

Disease is nature's revenge for our destructiveness.