#old

Everybody dies. There’s nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God. (Although there’s no question a belief in God would come in handy. It would be great to think there’s a plan, and that everything happens for a reason. I don’t happen to believe that. And every time one of my friends says to me, “Everything happens for a reason,” I would like to smack her.) ↗

— Nora Ephron

#old-age #age

Having buck teeth in junior high,” she rounded up unsteadily, “must be ideal preparation for getting old. For pretty people, aging is a dumb shock. It’s like, what’s going on? Why doesn’t anyone smile at me at checkout anymore? But it won’t be a shock for me. It’ll be, oh that. That again. Teeth. ↗

— Lionel Shriver

#getting-old #age

The young should not think of themselves as immature and the elderly need not view themselves as feeble. Our minds control our bodies. Have no age, transcend both past and future, and enter into naka-ima—the “eternal present. ↗

— H.E. Davey

#eternal #future #ki #meditation #nakamura-tempu

He turned to take one last look at the Old People’s Home that – until a few moments ago – he had thought would be his last residence on Earth, and then he told himself that he could die some other time, in some other place. The hundred-year-old man set off in his pee-slippers (so called because men of an advanced age rarely pee further than their shoes), first through a park and then alongside an open field where a market was occasionally held in the otherwise quiet provincial town. ↗

— Jonas Jonasson

#goodbye #man #old #age

This is what books only aimed to do and never could. Give you the glint of someone else's sunrise, what living is really like, you get old and it hurts to bend your elbow; your friends start to die, you can’t get fresh fruit in the shops. ↗

— Geoff Ryman

#aging #books #old-age #reading #writing

At a certain age men began to shrink, and yet it was precisely at that age that their trousers became too short for them. ↗

— Howard Jacobson

#trousers #age

When I grow up I want to be an old woman. ↗

— Michelle Shocked

#getting-old #getting-older #michelle-shocked #old-woman #age

Old age is a humble victory in this killing universe. ↗

— Mehmet Murat ildan

#age

The very next day, we were told that Abigail had had a massive stroke. She was alive, but the woman we had known had vanished. She did not know where she was or who she was. The alarm clock had gone off. The very old languish and die. We know that, buy the very old know it far better than the rest of us. They live in a world of continual loss and this, as my mother had said, is bitter. [p. 172] ↗

— Siri Hustvedt

#age

So this is it ⎯ what cost me all that time. A man who turned out to be old, a house that turned out to be empty. ↗

— Jennifer Egan

#death #getting-old #getting-older #wasting-time #age