It led rather downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and depression, where the sound of other lives, easier and freer, was heard as from above, and served to deepen the feeling of failure.
I think I don’t regret a single “excess” of my responsive youth I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn’t embrace.
The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern . . . this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.
