Aquarius
He is fifteen and ten and five. He is an instant. He is flying back to her. He is hers again. She feels the weight of him in her chest as he comes into her arms. He is her son, her beloved child, and she takes him back.
Ann Patchett, Commonwealth
The words that cannot be taken back are not the ones you regret most. They are the ones that changed the terms between you and another person, the ones that made something true by being spoken. You can apologize for what you said, but you cannot make the other person unhear it, and you cannot unknow what their face looked like when the words landed. What remains is not the hurt but the new information about what was always possible between you. The conversation you have been avoiding is the one where you decide what to do with that information.