aging

You always thought older people were wiser. It's not that. It's just that our relatives are dead and we're able to speak freely.

The important part of growing older was the growing part. Resisting change meant forever standing still, which was a sad way to live.

I reflected how easy it is for a man to reduce women of a certain age to imbecility. All he has to do is give an impersonation of desire, or better still, of secret knowledge, for a woman to feel herself a source of power.

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.

He couldn't be more than forty-five, but Murray Miles was stooped, old before his time. The mountains of Alberta had the ability to bend those who lived here.That, or it broke them.

My features have blunted with the passage of time, my reflection only faintly resembles how I see myself. Gravity demands payback for the years my body has resisted it.

My mother and I looked at each other then, full in the face, more frankly than we'd done since I was small. I realized with a jolt that I was taller than she was by at least half a foot. When on earth had that happened? The realization made me want to sit down on the stairs and cry. It seemed to signify something terrible about the world: something that couldn't - or mustn't- be put into words. And I could see, looking down into her startled, anxious face, that my mother felt exactly the same way.

Something I really enjoy about older couples is that they really have given up on getting everything right. They don't sweat the imperfections.

Blessing Number One. Thank you for getting old because it means you are getting to live.

Strange to be almost fifty, no? I feel like I just understood how to be young.""Yes! It's like the last day in a foreign country. You finally figure out where to get coffee, and drinks, and a good steak. And then you have to leave. And you won't ever be back.

Just as apples when unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow drop down, so it is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old. This ripeness is so delightful to me that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem, as it were, to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage.

Longevity is highly over rated.

Hi,_ Jake said. __ met you earlier today, but you were a lot younger then._ __ was a lot younger ten minutes ago.

This is exactly the sort of thing that makes traveling wonderful for me, the reason I defied everyone. The two of us together like we have always been, not saying anything, not doing anything special, just on vacation. I know nothing lasts, but even when you know that things are just about over, sometimes you can run back and take a little bit more and no one will notice.

I was young once and slender and pretty and I made the most of it. It's somebody else's turn now.

Aging is scary but fascinating, and great talent morphs in strange and often enlightening ways.

...as he was combing his hair in front of the mirror...only then did he understand that a man knows when he is growing older because he begins to look like his father.

Over the last few years, my comfort level with how I look has improved. My age has helped. You get used to yourself and accept yourself.