John Barth Quotes

Almost every modern literary form existed in Hebrew two thousand years ago. And, yes, it existed even during the middle ages.

Wherever there is power, there is age. Don't be deceived by dimples and curls. I tell you that babe is a thousand years old.

I've been a 90-year-old man since I was 12 years old.

Music keeps you eternally young. It just does.

There are things that you write when you're 20 and there are things that you write when you're 40 and then there are things that you write when you're old.

Nobody stays young forever.

I am not going to be 29 forever.

I've always been a very young person with a very old soul.

For me, personally, there is one really interesting thing. You're all a bit too young for that, but when you get to a certain level of experience, accumulation of experience you start slowly to once in a while get a whiff of the feeling, I'd love to be twenty years younger but with what I know and have experienced at this point.

In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.

'Neotenty' is 'remaining young,' and it may be ironic that it is so little known, because human evolution has been dominated by it.

You can't be a 25-year-old forever.

I still forget, sometimes, that I am no longer 12 years old.

My grandfather lived to be 96 years old. He was born in a town outside of Salerno in Southern Italy. He came to New York when he was 20. He lived in the States from age 20 to 96, but he brought his culture with him, he brought his food with him, he brought his language with him, he never spoke a word of English.

Of course, anybody's who's 26 years old will probably say, "Of course the old guy would say that." But wait until you're 45 or 46 years old. See how you feel about it then.

I'm maybe not so much an exception, maybe because I've lived so long that more is coming, more is there.

For souls nobly born, valor doesn't await the passing of years

He was one of those men who, as in youth they are never very young, so in age are they never very old.

I am eighty years old. There seems to be nothing to add to this statement. I have reached the age of undecorated facts - facts that refuse to be softened by sentiment, or confused by nobility of phrase.

To become young again would seem to me an appalling prospect. Youth is a kind of delirium, which can be cured, if it is ever cured at all, by years of painful treatment.

I'm really a pussycat and this [bad-boy] image has been totally overblown for 30 years. Sure, I used to rumble a little but I don't do that stuff anymore. I'm an old man now. When you reach your 50s, you realise that if you don't mellow, you won't last.

But years hath done this wrong, To make me write too much, and live too long.

There was great difference in persons; and discretion did not always accompany years, nor was youth always without it.

We have a mistaken notion of antiquity, calling that so which in truth is the world's nonage.

There are many things in this world that are an outrage, to be sure, but death at our current life expectancy doesn’t strike me as one of them. Maybe I sound like some Victorian who felt that forty years ought to be enough for any man, but one of the marks of a life well lived has to be reaching a state of finally getting it, of not needing more, and of being able to sign off with something approaching peace of mind.