She was indeed aching with that depression, which oddly takes the form of a sense of guilt, that comes to those who find themselves alone in sobriety… - Rebecca West

Behind me the past was darker than I had known it, not only irrecoverable, but unexplored, unexplorable.

It was his hopeless hope that some time he would have an experience that would act on his life like alchemy, turning to gold all the dark metals of events, and from that revelation he would go on his way rich with an inextinguishable joy. There had been, of course, no chance of his ever getting it. Literally there wasn't room to swing a revelation in his crowded life.

but it is not what one does so much as the way that while one does it time runs past forever.