Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?

What I mean is, right from that first time, there was
something in Tommy's manner that was tinged with sadness, that seemed to
say: “Yes, we're doing this now and I'm glad we're doing it now. But what a
pity we left it so late.

When I got to 40 or so... I had the sense when I looked back over my life I would actually see a mess of decisions, a few of which I had thought about, some of which I had sort of stumbled on, and many that I had no control over whatsoever.

Nagasaki is not just a few hazy images. I remember it as a real chunk of my life.

But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one's life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.

If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.