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Was it the case that colours dimmed as the eye grew elderly? Or was it rather that in youth your excitement about the world transferred itself onto ev...more

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When I was still quite young I had a complete presentiment of life. It was like the nauseating smell of cooking escaping from a ventilator: you don't ...more

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When you’re young you prefer the vulgar months, the fullness of the seasons. As you grow older you learn to like the in-between times, the months that...more

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Life versus Death becomes, as Montaigne pointed out, Old Age versus Death.

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I don't ever want to get old. Spare me that. Have you the power? No, even you don't have the power, alas.

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Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm, comfortab...more

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... forty's nothing, at fifty you're in your prime, sixty's the new forty, and so on.

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When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and...more

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Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of me...more

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In those days, we imagined ourselves as being kept in some kind of holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives. And when the moment came, our l...more

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Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.

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When you are in your twenties, if even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, ...more

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I blushed. You haven't seen a bald man in his sixties blush? Oh, it happens, just as it does to a hairy, spotty fifteen-year-old. And because it's rar...more