Geoff Dyer Quotes

When you are five, you know your age down to the month. Even in your twenties, you know how old you are. I'm twenty-three you say, or maybe twenty-seven. But then in your thirties, something strange starts to happen. It is a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm--you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you are not. You're thirty-five. And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it's decades before you admit it.

I was surprised when I started getting old. I always thought it was one of those things that would happen to someone else.

Of late I appear To have reached that stage When people who look old Who are only my age.

When you're a fledgling youth-type adult, it appears that all people in their 40s look old enough to be in a painting hanging on the wall of a stately home in England. It's not until you limp into your 70s that people in their 40s look too young to vote, and college cheerleaders closely resemble Yorkshire terriers.

I remember the moment I first became aware of aging. I was 30. I looked down at my knees, and the skin above them had become a little loose. And I thought, 'And so it begins!'

Time starts out as a notion. But after you turn fifty, time is not a notion anymore but a fact that you start feeling clearly, and in a way, it pushes you to become present in the present.

Middle Age - later than you think and sooner than you expect.

I don't write so much now. I'm getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

When you hit your 40s, you're walking around, and you realize, 'Oh, my God, men don't look at me anymore.' Or sometimes you can feel really good, and then you look in the mirror, and you're like, 'Oh, Jesus, that's my face now!' But I have tell you that something happened and shifted inside of me.

One thing they don't tell you about growing old - you don't feel old, you just feel like yourself. And it's true. I don't feel eighty-nine years old. I simply am eighty-nine years old.

I didn't mind getting old when I was young. It's the being old now that's getting to me.

It's horrible getting older. I mean, it's wonderful because you see the circles of life get completed. But it's horrible losing your looks.

When you approach middle age, lots of stuff happens. Your body is aging, you're watching people around you get sick, you're watching people die, your mortality becomes very present at that point in your life.

I see a guy getting old. I try to not look in the mirror too much.

Middle age is when you still believe you'll feel better in the morning.

You get to be a certain age and you start reading stuff about the age you are, and you think, what is wrong with these people who are writing these books? Do they not have necks?

Youth is like a long weekend on Friday night. Middle age is like a long weekend on Monday afternoon.

In your twenties, you think you are immortal. In your thirties, you hope you are immortal.

I think in your 30s you can still pretend you're in your 20s, or at least maintain some semblance of youth. Forty is when you've got to stop denying the inevitable.

Maybe it's true that life begins at fifty. But everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out.

One's relationship to time is complicated, and sometimes a day will drag on forever and sometimes it'll be over in a flash. When you look back, "I'm old," after 40 or 60 years, I can't believe I'm as old as I am.

All your life you think 60 is ancient, and all of a sudden you find you're 60 and you don't really feel that different. I feel stronger and more engaged. This is the best time of my life.

In middle age, I practiced feeling old, but the real thing has been a rude surprise.

People like to say, "You're only as old as you feel," but it isn't true. It's just something old people say to make themselves feel good about their age. You're as old as you are.

I warn people, your 40s will require massive amounts of humor and humility.