aging

At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.

To flatter a young man, tell him that you thought that he was older than he is. To flatter an old woman, tell her that you thought that she was younger than she is.

Old age saves us from the realization of a great many fears.

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."_ Michelle Tea, "Paris: A

You heard people say forty was the new thirty and fifty was the new forty and sixty was the new forty-five, but you never heard anybody say eighty was the new anything. Eighty was just eighty.

John had written that normal fantasy ("normal" in the T.S. Kuhn sense) was written for the moderately educated class suffering from ennui. It was for folks stuck doing dull, repetitive work, growing old while not getting laid half often or variously enough, watching other, less deserving people (the privileged and the crooks) scoop up your share of fun. So then the fantasy generates the exciting world where you're given a heroic purpose and an opportunity to use those very powers you have suspected that you had but never have been able to locate and use, except in destructive ways when shit-faced.

Though Charles II both craved and enjoyed female companionship till the end of his life, there is no question that by the cold, rainy autumn of 1682 his physical appetites had diminshed considerably. The Duchess of Portsmouth was, after all, more than twenty years his junior; and there comes a time in nearly every such relationship when the male partner is simply unable to fully accommodate the female partner. Or as Samuel Pepys tartly noted in his diary, "the king yawns much in council, it is thought he spends himself overmuch in the arms of Madame Louise, who far from being wearied, seems fresher than ever after sporting with the king.

I call the Change of Life "Orchids" because menopause is such an ugly word. It's got men in it for goddsakes.

it had been a winter of deadening seriousness, when all the illusions and bright dreams of my early twenties had withered and died. I did not yet have the interior resources to dream new dreams; I was far too busy mourning the death of the old ones and wondering how I was to survive without them. I was sure I could replace them somehow , but was not sure I could restore their brassy luster or dazzling impress .

Entire years had passed when he was rich enough in time to disregard the loose change of a minute, but now he obsessed over each one, this minute, the next minute, the one following, all of which were different terms for the same illusion.

John had written that normal fantasy ("normal" in the T.S. Kuhn sense) was written for the moderately educated class from suffering ennui. It was for folks stuck doing dull, repetitive work, growing old while not getting laid half often or variously enough, watching other, less deserving people (the privileged and the crooks) scoop up your share of fun. So then the fantasy generates the exciting world where you're given a heroic purpose and an opportunity to use those very powers you have suspected that you had but never have been able to locate and use, except in destructive ways when shit-faced.

Intelligence, goodness, humanity, excitement, serenity. Over time, these are the things that change the musculature of your face, as do laughter, and animation, and especially whatever peace you can broker with the person inside.It's furrow, pinch, and judgement that make us look older - our mothers were right. They said that if you made certain faces, they would stick, and they do. But our mothers forgot that faces of kindness and integrity stick as well.

The problem with aging was not that death was near, for death was always near. The problem with aging was that a woman began to carry too many memories within her.

Time erodes people, and when you are old enough you weigh nothing. It's comforting to know that I will never be as frail.

A doctor to whom I occasionally talk suggest that I have made an inadequate adjustment to aging.Wrong, I want to say.In fact I have made no adjustment whatsoever to aging.In fact I had lived my entire life to date without seriously believing that I would age.

By the time men get to be of our age, Mr. Vaiden, about all any new acquaintance can do is to remind them of somebody else. You know at times I have thought that is why we die. We become more and more intricately linked with the past, until finally we drift completely into it...and we are dead.

Almost as soon as it was lit it began to sound as though it were running down, but in fact it would continue to run down for a long time. He knew the feeling.

I invent a reason for the Hertz attendant to start the rental car.I am seventy-five years old: this is not the reason I give.