But however good you get at translating personality into line or paint it's no go if your personality isn't worth translating.

Knowledge of my atrocious selfishness, settled on me. All those bitter home truths she had flung at me, right from the beginning…and still loved me; was so blind that she still loved me. One day she had said: <i>When you love me</i> (and she had not meant “make love to me”) <i>it’s as if God forgave me for being the mess I am;</i> and I took it as chicanery, another emotional blackmail, to make me feel essential and so give me a sense of responsibility towards her.

If you are wise, you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did.