Ian McShane Quotes

Regret is pointless. I never do anything without first deciding to do it based on facts and feelings, and if it doesn't work out how I hoped, oh well - there's another notch on my experience belt.

I think it's natural as you get to the end of your twenties to start thinking about what you could have done differently - whether they went well or whether they went terribly.

At 17, we all think we know what we're doing.

Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

Obviously, when you're in your early twenties, you don't think about your decisions and their long term effects.

When you're in your twenties, your brain hasn't even finished baking, and your hormones are giving you all kinds of direction of which ways to go.

Back in your twenties you're discovering your boundaries in life, whether it's with relationships or friendships and partying.

I think everyone in their 30s looks back at their 20s and thinks, 'Oh God, if I'd just done this and this, and not done that.'

Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That's the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don't grow up.

Recently I read the stories I wrote in my early 20s, to put in a volume. And here is this brittle young woman, writing about marriage as, not the worst thing, but the most boring thing that could happen to a person. Now I think I was wrong. I like to be proven wrong.

At a certain point, you realize you have a responsibility more behind yourself and your need for adrenaline. I'm glad I did things in my 20s that were more reckless.

If I had to do it over, I wouldn't change a thing.

I started with the firm conviction that when I came to the end, I wanted to be regretting the things that I had done, not the things I hadn't.

I am the result of the good choices I've made and the bad choices.

I had years of partying, and I was kind of surprised and happy I survived it all. Now, being a parent, I look back on it thinking, Oh God, the things you did!

I'm not changing to the point where suddenly I wear floor-length skirts and start playing the violin; I'm just growing up a little bit, I guess.

I haven't lived a perfect life. I have regrets. But that's from a lifetime of taking chances, making decisions, and trying not to be frozen. The only thing that I can do with my regrets is understand them.

I feel like I experienced my 20s in all their glory and all their disastrousness.

Everything I did and continue to do happens for a reason, and honestly, I don't regret much in my life.

I didn't lead a very wise life, myself, but it was a full one and a grown-up one. You come of age very quickly through shipwreck and disaster.

A lot of first novels are coming-of-age stories. A lot are autobiographical.

When I was younger, I thought I was too young to really be personal. I thought that what I was feeling and thinking might be half-baked.

I lived my twenties in a very public manner and if anyone's twenties are documented it's not always going to be pretty.

I think the whole of people's psychology and where they are in life interests me, and the decisions you make that take you on particular journeys to different places.

If I ran into a 19-year-old version of myself, I'd just tell her to live, full out. I might also tell her to go ahead and have a few babies and not worry about the timing of it.