Richard Curtis Quotes

I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.

Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it--the wind coming off the river, the waves, the silence, the wooded frontier. You're at the bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You're twenty-one years old, you're scared, and there's a hard squeezing pressure in your chest. What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?

Didn't help to ponder things that were forever gone. It only made a body restless and fill up with bees, all wanting to sting something.

I am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened.

My life is in denial. And when I die, baptized in eternal fire, I'll shed many tears.

The best years are behind me.

Don't time travel into the past, roaming through the nuances as if they can change. Don't bookmark pages you've already read.

Ignorant men don't know what good they hold in their hands until they've flung it away.

Experience is what you have after you've forgotten her name.

The mind that is wise mourns less for what age takes away; than what it leaves behind.

The past is over.

Only with a new ruler do you realize the value of the old.

What I learned on 'To Die For,' I learned over the years that followed, when some memory from the shoot would bubble up to the surface of my mind, and I could see it from a new perspective. I would usually cringe when that happened.

I don't look back and regret anything.

I only felt a cold wind blow while I tried to hang on to the past.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.

If I could undo what's been done, But I guess everyone is living, With water and bridges.

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

My whole life, I had thought that my story was, again and again: Once upon a time, there was a boy, and he had to risk everything to keep what he loved. But really, the story was: Once upon a time, there was a boy, and his fear ate him alive.

Time is never time at all. You can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth. And our lives are forever changed. We will never be the same. The more you change, the less you feel.

I sat. And I thought. And the more I thought, connecting the events in my life, the more my heart collapsed.

Sometimes I worry that I've lost the plot My twitching muscles tease my flippant thoughts I never really dreamed of heaven much Until we put him in the ground. There is nothing as lucky, as easy, or free

Sometimes he thinks that if he could only trace the path of his life carefully enough, everything would become clear. The ways that he screwed up would make sense. He closes his eyes tightly. His life wasn't always a mistake, he thinks, and he breathes uncertainly for awhile, trying to find a pathway into unconsciousness, into sleep.

There's no way you can get the past right. You can pretend. You can delude yourself, but you can't re-create what's over.

But that was the best time of my life, and only now that it has gone from me forever -- only now do I realize it.