Aging & Wisdom Quote by Roger McGough

Regret arrives here in plain clothes, repeating itself like someone stuck at the door, keys in hand, replaying the moment they chose the wrong street. McGough gives us a voice that can barely bear its own conclusion: "We shouldn't have got married, really. Shouldn't have got married". The stuttered echo isn’t poetic ornament; it’s an emotional tic. Repetition becomes self-indictment, the mind circling a decision it can’t undo, trying to soften the blow by saying it twice, as if rehearsal could make it less true.

The language is stubbornly ordinary: "got married" instead of anything romantic or ceremonial. That choice drains marriage of myth and replaces it with logistics and momentum, something you "get" into, like trouble. "Really" does quiet work too: it’s a hedging word that pretends modesty while sharpening the judgment. This isn’t a dramatic confession; it’s a weary correction to an old story they once told themselves.

Then come the clipped verdicts: "Too young. Not ready for it". No subject, no nuance, no blame assigned to a partner. The grammar itself feels like emotional minimalism, what you say when the full explanation is either too painful or too endless. In the context of McGough’s broader knack for accessible, conversational lyricism, the intent reads as anti-romantic realism: not a denunciation of love, but of the cultural script that treats marriage as a finish line rather than a weather system you have to learn to live inside.