John Irving Quotes

To grow up requires a whole life but to become old one night is enough.

Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game finished, that the stage belongs to the rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the body, but the indifference of the soul.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

The fear of old age is something that one feels when they're younger. Once you get to being old, you're already there, so you don't even think about it anymore.

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.

If you're asking me to acknowledge that I've gotten older, I can do that.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

I've never been scared of aging.

Anything is possible in the life of a man if he lives long enough. Even maturity.

We do not necessarily improve with age: for better or worse we become more like ourselves.

For the complete life, the perfect pattern includes old age as well as youth and maturity.

If I had been helping the Almighty when he created man, I would have had him begin at the other end, and start human beings with old age. How much better to start old and have all the bitterness and blindness of age in the beginning!

The most important thing is growing old gracefully.

It is not mere chance that makes families speak of a child who is 'extraordinary for his age' and also of an old man who is 'extraordinary for his age'; the extraordinariness lies in their behaving like human beings when they are either not yet or no longer men.

The evening of life brings with it its lamps.

Every stage of human life, except the last, is marked out by certain and defined limits; old age alone has no precise and determinate boundary.

Growing old-it's not nice, but it's interesting.

Old age makes caricatures of us all.

An old young man, will be a young old man.

What surprises me about getting older is that I remain so young.

What you desire when young, you have in abundance when old.

We do ourselves and others a disservice when we make old age something to be feared...The longer we live, the more life we possess.

In my opinion, everybody is getting older and older. We have a great deal of dementia because nobody grew old enough to get it.

As you get older, you get a bit more serious.