“The great fact all the while however had been the incalculability; since he had supposed himself, from decade to decade, to be allowing, and in the most liberal and intelligent manner, for brilliancy of change. He actually saw that he *had* allowed for nothing; he missed what he would have been sure of finding, he found what he would never have imagined. Proportions and values were upside-down; the ugly things he had expected, the ugly things of his far away youth, when he had too promptly waked up to a sense of the ugly--these uncanny phenomena placed him rather, as it happened, under the charm; whereas the swagger things, the modern, the monstrous, the famous things, those he had more particularly, like thousands of ingenuous enquirers every year, come over to see, were exactly his sources of dismay. They were as so many set traps for displeasure, above all for reaction, of which his restless tread was constantly pressing the spring. It was interesting, doubtless, the whole show, but it would have been too disconcerting hadn t a certain finer truth saved the situation. He had distinctly not, in this steadier light, come over *all* for the monstrosities; he had come, not only in the last analysis but quite on the face of the act, under an impulse with which they had nothing to do. ( The Jolly Corner )”
“Since few people arrive at retirement with an understanding that this transition will involve a rethinking of who they are, an interim pattern has emerged, in which travel offers a way of fulfilling deferred daydreams of adventure while the next stage takes shape. [p. 31]”
“Sorting gets harder as time goes on--it requires a sort of ruthless decisiveness, while indecision results in endless dithering. Five moves, they say, equal a fire. But those who haven t moved may begin to need a fire. [p. 38]”
“We never promised we would stay the same,/But only we would shape our change/From this now single clay.[p. 82]”
“Kaneria has competed in more than 50 Test series [sic] for Pakistan during his career.”
“now that one was mature then, said Peter, one could watch, one could understand, and one did not lose the power of feeling, he said. No, that is true, said Sally. She felt more deeply, more passionately, every year. It increased, he said, alas, perhaps, but one should be glad of it-- it went on increasing in his experience.”
“The hands reaching in among the leaves and spines were once my mother s. I ve passed them on. Decades ahead, you ll study your own temporary hands, and you ll remember. Don t cry, this is what happens.”
“You can tell you re getting old when the heat blast from your birthday cake candles feels hotter than the surface of the sun.”
“Pain is what gives rise to meditation. It has nothing to do with age, let alone beards”
“When a body s this old, she can claim to be as wise as she wants.”
“It was largely my interest in art that had destroyed any life in the world around me. I d learned perspective, and about balance, and composition. It was as if I d learned to redesign everything, to reshape it so I saw what OUGHT to be there, which of course is much inferior to what IS there. The dullness was not an inevitable consequence of age, but of education.”
“How different the life cycle looks if we substitute the word ‘growth’ for ageing. The word ‘age’ has become so contaminated by contempt and fear that it’s tempting to dispense with it altogether. Better, though, to try to reclaim it, detoxify it and attach it to the whole life cycle, rather than just offloading the idea of ageing onto later life. For to age is to live and to live is to age, and being anti-age (as so many products proudly proclaim themselves) is tantamount to being anti-life. By embracing age we embrace the life process itself, with all its pain, joy and difficulty. If we can cultivate a respect for our own growth, and develop the ability to greet our ageing self with both pleasure and realism, and without the need to either idealize or deride its younger incarnation, then we’re putting in place important capacities that will serve us our entire lives.”
“I’m older than anybody here, I know more than anybody here, so why should I be so afraid of anybody here?”
“By this point in the conversation, the bank robber was starting to feel very old, especially since the twenty-year-old on the other side of the conversation gave the impression that she was fourteen years old. Which of course she wasn t, but the bank robber was thirty-nine, and had therefore reached an age where there s suddenly very little difference between fourteen and twenty. That s what makes a person feel old.”
“The bank robber undeniably had a point. Not that this is in any way a defense of bank robbers, but they can have bad days at work, too. Hand on heart, which of us hasn t wanted to pull a gun after talking to a twenty-year-old?”
“At your age, I would expect you to have had a boyfriend or two, but if you ve had intimate- I m not that old. Layla bristled, cutting him off. In this market you are. Sam smirked. Most of the girls who have responded to my desilovematch.com profile are under twenty-one. You re practically an auntie. I m surprised your profile got as much interest as it did.”
“I cannot live in the new time anyway, because I belong to the old time, which is dead.”