Believe me there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory....everything is forgotten, even a great love. That's what's sad about life, and also what's wonderful about it. There is only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in a while. That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion- it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from.
I have never been able, really, to regret anything in all my life. I have always been far much too absorbed in the present moment or the immediate future to think back.
If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.