I'm very tempted to say "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens, not because my life has been any harder than many other, as I certainly believe that we all have our cross to bear, that into each life some rain must fall. No, it's more likely to be A Tale of Two Cities, based on the first line: " It was times best of times, it was the worst of times". In my life I have experienced the innocence of first love and the bittersweet sorrow of first love lost. I have known true love and have lost true love. I have rejoiced with loved ones, and mourned their deaths. I have experienced both wealth and poverty. If my life ended today, I don't think I've missed out on a single thing of much importance. Life's been good to me so far. In the story two men are in love with the same woman. Which is also a theme in Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises", another favorite of mine, this time it's the closing line that captures a part of my imagination. The beautiful lover says to the heartbroken man, "we would have been so good together", and he, with wisdom born of pain, replies as we all must at some point in our life, "isn't it pretty to think so". Couldn't you just hear Bogart speaking those lines to Ingrid Bergman on the runway at the end of Casablanca?

All of this makes me think of the Desperado who rides the range, hiding from life with good reason, he's been hurt, but he has to come back and keep on living. None of us can ride the range by ourselves forever. Sooner or later we have to let somebody love us, and we have to let ourselves love them, before it's too late.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juzUq5sPOE0&feature=related