Once when he was still young, I saw a bit of his scalp showing through his hair and I was afraid. But it was just a cowlick. Now sometimes it shows through for real, but...

Before forty, you think that exhaustion is something like a long-lasting hangover. But at forty you learn all about it. Even your passions exhaust you.

I’m not sure about all the particulars that led to this moment. Do I believe life is a series of dots to be connected…or that no one can outrun destiny…or that all roads lead to...

There is a line in Verlaine I shall not recall again,There is a street close by forbidden to my feet,There’s a mirror that’s seen me for the very last time,There is a door that I...

And still the brain continues to yearn, continues to burn, foolishly, with desire. My old man’s brain is mocked by a body that still longs to stretch in the sun and form a beautiful shape...

Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through men’s eyes when deciding what provokes it.

Getting older comes with abilities. Being old comes with disabilities.

Too-lateness, I realized, has nothing to do with age. Too-lateness is potentially every moment. Or not, depending on the person and the moment. Perhaps there even comes a time when it’s no longer too late...

So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long. For suppose you should think that a man had had...

Sometimes when you get older—and I’m not talking about you, I’m talking generally, because everyone ages differently—things you think on and wish on start to seem real. And then you believe them, and before you...

Youth is marked by a breathtaking novelty that diminishes with each year of age – until life becomes a delusive struggle to break routines, escape the ordinary, and rediscover the joy of discovery.

Most teenage girls don’t give old people the time of day which is sad because all old people do all the time is think about how nice it was to be a teenager so long...

Maturity/experience: the beguiling texture of stones subjected to years of furious seas.

Three days a week she helped at the Manor Nursing Home, where people proved their keenness by reciting received analyses of current events. All the Manor residents watched television day and night, informed to the...

I felt old. Again. It had been happening a lot lately. I did not live the life of an old lady, but I could hear it beckoning to me, like a mermaid on a rock.”—...

Right now is the youngest I’ll ever be, so I suppose I’d better act immature while I still can.

I like to fantasize about how far I’ll have come in a year. A year from now, I’ll be 12 months further than where I am today. And the most impressive part is I don’t...

She is leaving him, not all at once, which would be painful enough, but in a wrenching succession of separations. One moment she is here, and then she is gone again, and each journey takes...

Nat: Maybe you broke something.Midge: I know. Never fall down, never fall down!Nat: Ah, it’s nothing. I fall down every morning. I get up, I have a cup of coffee, I fall down. That’s the...

The older you get, the more questions you get asked, and the more weary you become of answering the questions and the more elusive the answers–any answer, every answer–seem. –Maureen O’Toople in the short story...

I hope you learn how to slow down and not let your life pass you by while you’re watching the idiot box. Life’s short, and one day you’ll wake up and look in the mirror...

A boy from Brooklyn used to cruise on summer nights.As soon as he’d hit sixty he’d hold his hand out the window,cupping it around the wind. He’d been assuredthis is exactly how a woman’s breast...

On the third day Vera said:’I love your body because it is beautiful. But I do not know your soul. I do not know whether there is a soul. Nor is it necessary for me...

Self-denial can lock women into a smug and critical condescension to other, less devout women.According to Appel, cult members develop…”an attitude of moral superiority, a contempt for secular laws, rigidity of thought, and the diminution...

He doesn’t know it yet, but the infinity of childhood is brief.

I’ve always figured it that you die each day and each day is a box, you see, all numbered and neat; but never go back and lift the lids, because you’ve died a couple of...

We keep making decisions, every day, half without thinking, half against our will. If we don’t fight back, if we allow ourselves to change, to be changed, then once it’s done we have to do...

The woman who undergoes this operation can sense the morphogenetic field at work in her face. She can feel the lines of force as they guide the embryonic cells into the patterns they must form....

I don’t know who to write to anymore… They’ve changed their souls, that’s a way to be disloyal, to forget, to keep talking about something else.

The older you get, the faster time passes in your mind, so use your time according to what is most important.

Are you thankful for not being young?”Yes, sir. If I was young, it would all have to be gone through again, and the end would be a weary way off, don’t you see?…

I love opera. Si. But I am old. No passion in my life, you know? I work, I walk slowly now through my years…but opera! I see, I hear that passion, Eva. Is like the...

Instead of hip hip hooray, how about hip hip replacement? Old age should be celebrated one wobbly step at a time until the top of the stairs topples down onto the topless crowd below.

It is my opinion that enjoying yourself in the present and loosening your definition of time slows the aging process.

Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.

I’m growing fonder of my staff; I’m growing dimmer in my eyes; I’m growing fainter in my laugh; I’m growing deeper in my sighs; I’m growing careless of my dress; I’m growing frugal of my...

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.” _Mark Twain (Author)

Butterfly KissesAged imperfectionsstitched upon my faceyears and years of wisdomearned by His holy grace.Quiet solitude in a humble homeall the family scattered nowlike nomads do they roam.Then a giftsent from abovea memorypure and tangiblewrapped in...

I had forgotten such innocence exists,/forgotten how it feels/ to live with neither calendars nor clocks

Men are visually aroused by women’s bodies and less sensitive to their arousal by women’s personalities because they are trained early into that response, while women are less visually aroused and more emotionally aroused because...

Sexual satisfaction eases the stranglehold of materialism, since status symbols no longer look sexual, but irrelevant. Product lust weakens where emotional and sexual lust intensifies. The price we pay for artificially buoying up this market...

One by one they are being picked off around him: in his small circle of colleagues the ratio slowly grows top-heavy, more ghosts, more each winter, and fewer living… and with each one, he thinks...

•Judge less–or at least later.•Give new ideas and images a chance.•Understand that everyone has his own truth or her own.•Remember: you are not married to any belief, opinion, or ideology.•Expect to discover something delicious every...

Age and illness made one a dualist

Getting older is a question of coming to terms with the fact that you’ll never know the secrets; and the resulting equilibrium is what gives the illusion of actually knowing them.

I know what’s wrong with me – I could never stand still for death! Which you’ve got to do by a certain age, or be ridiculous – you’ve got to stand there nobly and serene,...

I’m falling into disrepair

We’re always trotting out some story of a ninety-seven-year-old who runs marathons, as if such cases were not miracles of biological luck but reasonable expectations for all. Then, when our bodies fail to live up...

I Didn’t Ask to Be a Senior Citizen (I Was Drafted)

Age doesn’t arrive slowly, it comes in a rush. One day nothing has changed, a week later, everything has. A week may be too long a time, it can happen overnight. You are the same...