What editors are obliged to appear to say that men want from women is actually what their advertisers want from women.

Wrinkles don’t signify old age, they signify a lack of ironing skills or a dearth of hangers to hang clothes on.

I read differently now, more painstakingly, knowing I am probably revisiting the books I love for the last time. (245)

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.

I don’t know what the old you was like, but the new you, the older you than the old you, is new and fresh.


I'm over the hill for come-on lines. On a quiet day, I can hear my liver rotting. For exercise, I fall down. ~ Clete

Life goes on and on after one's luck has run out. Youthfulness persists, alas, long after one has ceased to be young.

You grow weary of being treated as the enemy simply because you are not young anymore; because you dress unexceptionally.

She was an object lesson on the essential luck, whatever hardships may come their way, of those born able to make things.

Trust me, somewhere over the rainbow, happily ever after, etcetera, etcetera - looks far less likely in your mid-thirties.

I have a friend who likes to date younger women because their stories are shorter. Old men like us, our stories are longer.

But if we are truly happy inside, then age brings with it a maturity, a depth, and a power that only magnifies our radiance.

One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.

Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul, like you.

More and more, he heard his spine playing stick games through his skin, singing old dusty words, the words of all his years.