The ghosts that exert the most power in people__ lives-at least, the people I know__end to be of their own making, and consist of equal parts regret and old fears and just plain missing somebody.

This isn__ how things were supposed to happen. I was supposed to be me. Not this.

I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.

Don't ever say you are sorry for "being caught in the moment". Because, at that moment, that is EXACTLY where you wanted to be.

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.

I spent so much time thinking about regret. Regret and its accompanying conviction that there is a perfect, placid life, one's own alternate existence, pristine and simple, existing in a neighboring reality in which certain turns in the road were never set upon. And it isn't true. Any of it. I knew that. I had learned it. But it is an irresistible fantasy, if only because it implies we have some control over our fates.