Do you know," he said, "there are men who would like very much to see me dead. Powerful men. Obscenely wealthy me. Men who can afford to be patient and engage the services of large, ruthless brutes. I've managed to evade them all. But you. . . God's truth, I think you'll be the very death of me.
Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.