866 quotes found
“We place such crazy importance on physical appearance in our image-obsessed culture, on youth and beauty to define our sense of self-worth, that aging, by default, becomes a kind of defect, somethi...”
“There is something about my face in the mirrors that catch it. Even at a distance it will never be right again, not even to a casual glance. Beauty: it's the upkeep that costs, that's what Balzac s...”
“My skin has the crinkled appearance of wax paper that someone has tried to flatten and reuse. My eyes fail me oftenin the darkness, when headlights flash, when rain falls. It is unnerving, this new...”
“Looking at death can be life-affirming. It doesnt need to mire us in thoughts of uselessness, nihilism, self-recrimination, and indifference to the future. Just a reminder that our days are numbere...”
“I'm finding that the older I get, it's not that I learn new things, it's more like I find out how much of what I know is common knowledge.”
“...her own experience was beginning to tell her that an alert old age can be more keen than the cards.”
“Marriage is like a series of opposing reflections, inverse images getting ever smaller like nesting dolls, each one of your trying to squeeze yourself smaller to fit inside the hopes of the other, ...”
“My hair would continue to gray, and then one day, it would fall out entirely, and then, on a day meaninglessly close to the present one, meaninglessly like the present one, I would disappear from t...”
“I used to dream of true love; now I'm open to false, but convincing....”
“The only consolation, even for someone like him who had been a good man in bed, was sexual peace: the slow, merciful extinction of his venereal appetite. At eighty-one years of age he had enough lu...”
“It is my opinion that enjoying yourself in the present and loosening your definition of time slows the aging process.”
“All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another fl...”
“The body fades. A leader who would last relies on more.”
“In the parlor was a huge camera on wheels like the ones used in public parks, and the backdrop of a marine twilight, painted with homemade paints, and the walls papered with pictures of children at...”
“Arthur said, You must know that you don't love children for being good or bad. I know you know that.Why do you love them?Because you do, said Arthur. Because they don't know what's coming and maybe...”
“I have produced no children of my own and my husband is dead," she replied, an acid tone in her voice. "Thus I am more to be pitied than revered. I am expected to give up the shop to my nephew, who...”
“In the end, the slow decay of the body didn't matter. We all continue on, renewing ourselves, through our offspring. They are what matter. They are what survives.”
“The joy of reading with our children doesn't stop as they, and we, get older; it simply changes.”
“Prayer of an Anonymous Abbess:Lord, thou knowest better than myself that I am growing older and will soon be old. Keep me from becoming too talkative, and especially from the unfortunate habit of t...”
“Maybe, the question isn't who will look good by your side, who will make these days less dull, who will bring you the greatest financial benefit, who will be the one to bring you pleasure, who do y...”
