Paul Zane Pilzer Quotes

I'm no longer in my 20s, and I think, by default, the rose-colored glasses are off.

Once we reach a certain age, we tend to recalibrate our expectations. We expect less from the world once we've seen it up close.

I think the 20s are a vastly overrated decade. We promise kids that once they get out of school, life will begin and their dreams will come true. But then comes the struggle.

When I was growing up and trying to get my foot on the ladder, I had the self-belief that my mother taught me, and it never occurred to me that anything could go wrong. I've learned life can't be like that.

When you say you're 40, you can't call yourself an ingenue any more.

By the time a man is 35 he knows that the images of the right man, the tough man, the true man which he received in high school do not work in life.

I'm not as hopeful as I was when I was young.

I'm less Pollyanna now. That's probably healthy.

At twenty a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he is seventy he still wants to reform the world, but he know he can't.

When you're an adult, when times are good, entire years go by in what feels like the space of one season. But the worst trick time plays on you is just how slowly the worst times in your life take you to live through.

Adults are obsolete children.

Perhaps the biggest myth about cynicism is that it deepens with age. I think what really happens is that experience painfully rips away layers of scales from our eyes, and so we do indeed become more cynical about many of the things we naively accepted when younger.

The older people that one admires seem to be fearless. They go right out into the world. It's astounding. Maybe they can't see or they can't hear, but they walk out into the street and take life as it comes. They're models of courage, in a strange way.

I think everything about my life is magical. I've struggled, and against most odds, I'm truly having the experience of living my dreams.

When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.

By the time I'm 40, interplanetary travel will be common. Nobody will want to talk to me at that age, anyway.

Now there is this whole terror about getting old. Today, that fascination with youth is overrated. What's so special about being young? I just say that because I'm old.

You know, I wanted to get married, and so I - but I, you know, I realize no matter what you want, it's kind of a fantasy.

It is inevitable that many ideas of the young mind will later have to give way to the hard realities of life.

When I was young, I was told: 'You'll see, when you're fifty.' I am fifty and I haven't seen a thing.

I see kids and young adults walking the streets of L.A. with this enormous sense of entitlement, who seem to think that if they are basically good people and pay their bills, then the world will be good back to them. And I think life isn't always like that.

We all have friends and loved ones who say 60's the new 30. No. Sixty's the new 60.

To be in a magazine when you're 20 is okay, but when you do it when you're 65, it's much more fun!

I think there's this thing that happens when you're younger: The things that you want are different than when you're older, and sometimes the person that you liked when you were a teenager is not necessarily the person that you would want to settle down with for the rest of your life once you're older, more mature, and have kids.

A child wants things to be a certain way. When you get to be an adult, you just understand that some people are good, some are not, and you can't be naive.