“Patti, did art get us?' I looked away, not really wanting to think about it. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know.' Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art; or a saint.”

“I don't have any regrets, really, except that one. I wanted to write about you, about us, really. Do you know what I mean? I wanted to write about everything, the life we're having and the lives we might have had. I wanted to write about all the ways we might have died.”

“It feels good to know that if I died tomorrow I would have absolutely no regrets about things I wanted to do in life but did not try.”

“I don't know how to regret it. Because that would mean to regret that I ever met her and I can't make myself do that.”

“I really want to be a writer but I don't know what to write about""You could write about us”

“You love the Pope, don't you, Paddy?" Tom is staring at me."Why, I do not know," I say, surprised into honesty. "I hardly know about him. Only he did not send help to us when we were hungry at home. Perhaps he did not know.”