#ageing

Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.' 'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit. 'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.' 'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?' 'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. ↗

— Margery Williams

#ageing #authenticity #becoming #being-loved #being-real

I was thinking not very long ago about the difference between the people we "grew up" with vs. the people we're "growing old" with - not always being one and the same - and how time (and the memories we forge together) really does strengthen pretty much all of our relationships/friendships (whether they had started on the right foot or not). And I guess what I've mostly learned (by moving to NZ especially) is that the more Significant people you have in your life, the more 'manageable' the idea of loss, losing a loved-one, can become - not because you can replace them (obviously you can't) or because they're interchangeable (no one is), but because like a foundation to a house the more pillars you have (people you love) holding it up (loving you) the more solid/resilient you become - and from there, I find you're better equipped to overcome whatever life throws your way. That said time does pass us by very quickly. I find it much more noticeable through our growing kids than ever before. ↗

— Kim Dallmeier

#friendship #time #age

Late middle age, he was coming to understand, was a time of life when everything was predictable and yet somehow you failed to see any of it coming. ↗

— Richard Russo

#age

People's opinions don't interfere with me. Ageing gracefully is supposed to mean trying not to hide time passing and just looking a wreck. That's what they call ageing gracefully. You know? ↗

— Jeanne Moreau

#call #gracefully #hide #interfere #just

Of course, the young male demographic has always been the target demographic for 'Star Trek,' the men ageing fifteen to about twenty-five or thirty, a very tough market to appeal to. ↗

— Kate Mulgrew

#ageing #always #appeal #been #course

...inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#humor #age

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end. ↗

— Simone de Beauvoir

#inifinity #life #old-age #age

Hardest of all, as one becomes older, is to accept that sapient remarks can be drawn from the most unwelcome or seemingly improbable sources, and that the apparently more trustworthy sources can lead one astray. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#ageing #henry-kissinger #old-age #sources #wisdom

A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realisation that you can't make old friends. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#friendship #age

These wrinkles are nothing These gray hairs are nothing, This stomach which sags with old food, these bruised and swollen ankles, my darkening brain, they are nothing. I am the same boy my mother used to kiss. ↗

— Mark Strand

#poetry #time #age