“Women not only bear the brunt of the equation of beauty with youth, we perpetuate itevery time we dye our hair to cover the gray or lie about our age, not to mention have plastic surgery to cover t...”

“My first interview was with eighty-eight-year-old folk artist Marcia Muth Your life does change as you get older, she told me. You get into whats important and whats not.”

“Its not loving a man that makes life harder for gay guys, its homophobia. Its not the color of their skin that makes life harder for people of color; its racism. Its not having vaginas that makes l...”

“The sooner growing older is stripped of reflexive dread, the better equipped we are to benefit from the countless ways in which it can enrich us.”

“We dont ask when people age out of singing, or eating ice cream; why would we stop making love?”

“Nowhere is ageism more sexist, and vicious, than in the domain of sexuality.”

“THE BEST people are the good old wrinkled people with a sparkle in their eye, a wink when you walk by or a toothless smile saying you are doing just fine ...”

“People will laugh at your age over your Mind and Essence”

“The story of humanity can be written as the struggle to acknowledge all human beings as human beings.”

“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.”

“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”

“I have left orders to be awakened at any time during national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.”

“What young people didnt know, she thought, lying down beside this man, his hand on her shoulder, her arm; oh, what young people did not know. They did not know that lumpy, aged, and wrinkled bodies...”

“Use all this life to make yourself a great writer, thoughtful and kind, slowly, surely over the years.”