Old Quotes

I have everything I had twenty years ago, only it’s all a little lower.

The older we get, the more Jewish we become in my family. My mother’s father declared himself an atheist in his communist youth, so we never belonged to a synagogue or had bat mitzvahs. But we wind up in Hebrew homes for the aged and in cemeteries with Hebrew letters over the gates. Thus does […]

For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.

All one’s life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to be noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It is a positive thing. You can move about, […]

You’ve heard of the three ages of man: youth, middle age, and “you’re looking wonderful!”

Old age is an excellent time for outrage. My goal is to say or do at least one outrageous thing every week.

Man is capable of his greatest works when his mental powers are already on the wane, just as it is hotter in July at two in the afternoon, when the sun is already declining, than it is in June at midday

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, With a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me, And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves, And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

At age 20, we worry about what others think of us. At 40, we don’t care what they think of us. At 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking of us at all.

Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego.