Harold Brodkey Quotes

A year ago, I turned the final page of The Book of the Dead. I don't feel young any more.

In your teens and twenties, death doesn't exist. In your thirties, you glance down the road occasionally. But then in your forties, it becomes a full-time job looking the other way.

Everyone gets old - there's nothing you can do about it.

You get old, you slow down.

I awake with a not entirely sickened knowledge that I am merely young again and in a funny way at peace, an observer who is aware of time's chariot, aware that some metamorphosis has occurred.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

It's funny, because when you're younger you're in a rush to be 18 or 21 or whatever. But then you hit 30. And now, the days go by like hours. You think, 40, man, this could be the halfway point. It could be the three-quarters point, you know? Who knows?

One of the things I noticed is that people really change when they realize their expiration date is coming, and they know what it is. Most of us don't: we just hope we can live as long as we can and do as much good as we can.

The passage of time is a continuing thing. At 18, you're going to live forever, and you are definitely not at 52, so that is a recurring topic. I still think it's the main stuff.

The worst part about celebrating another birthday is the shock that you're only as well as you are.

I don’t like getting old at all, but then again, who does?

Age is inevitable. Aging isn't.

It's scary when you look at how kids age, because you think, 'Am I aging at that rate, too?'

This getting old is something. I think I envy my dog, because my dog is sixteen, and she's limping, and she's still living, but she doesn't look at me like she knows. She's not thinking what I'm thinking. It's a cruel trick that we all know the ending.

I read once, somewhere, that the way you know you've grown up is when your future death becomes a stone in your shoe: when you feel it with every step.

That is the tragedy of growing old, Chris. You don't leave the world. It leaves you.

To grow old is to lose everything.

The only reason for being young is to outgrow it.

He is already past the high point in his life and coming down on the other side. By next week he'll be nostalgia. He's 12 years old, and it's over for him.

Most all of the writers I admired when I was in my teens and twenties died young. Fitzgerald lived the longest. He was 44. Dylan Thomas was 39. And then once you're approaching 40, you suddenly think, "Well, maybe I would like to live longer than Fitzgerald or Thomas."

If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.

If I die soon, don't ever say I died too young.

I'm 61 years old. I'm not that fearful of the future, period. I'm not going to see that much of it.