she lay in bed, life about to slip from her battered forty-seven-year-old body, her final words were, “Every damn thing you do in this life you have to pay for.”[23] Does that sound like a person with no regrets? However, if Piaf had reckoned with her regrets, if she had confronted them rather than tried to wriggle past them, she would have discovered something more important: Every damn thing you do in life can pay off for you. Because, as we’re about to discover, regret doesn’t just make us human. It also makes us better.
