Sydney Pollack Quotes

When you're in your 20s, your 30s, even, you have - at least, I had - vast ambitions, and you sit around mooning about these things, and you're depressed, because you haven't done them. And it takes you a long time to come to the realization that if you can't be John Updike, well, then, you can't.

Many feel discouraged because they have not measured up to their potential.

Now that I'm 40, I knew I wasn't going to pass for 25.

I think every guy that hits his 40s has a little bit of a wake-up call and wants to just keep things real, as they say, and just to push yourself.

I've been around the track a lot. I've had the best of the years, and I don't want a single year back.

During my freshman year of college, it became undeniably clear that I didn't want to be great again. I correlated greatness with misery.

I think I've underachieved quite heavily.

Film critics said I gave a voice to the fear we all have: that we'll reach a certain point in our lives, look around and realize that all the things we said we'd do and become will never come to be - and that we're ordinary.

Age gives you a great sense of proportion. You can be very hard on yourself when you're younger but now I just think 'well everybody's absolutely mad and I'm doing quite well'.

Turning 50 is a little bit of a 'taking stock' moment. I feel probably a little dumber. I don't think I'm as sharp as I was when I was younger, but I'm definitely wiser and less likely to make gigantic blunders of an intellectual, spiritual, emotional or physical type.

I'm definitely a lot more comfortable now in my 40s than in my 30s - that's for sure.

At a certain point, you have to face the fact that you've turned into an old fart.

The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.

If I missed my moment, I missed my moment. I mean, I wasn't pining to be president of the United States.

I think it's nice to age gracefully. OK, you lose the youth, a certain stamina and dewy glow, but what you gain on the inside as a human being is wonderful: the wisdom, the acceptance and the peace of mind. It's a fair exchange.

I'm enjoying 40. Old enough to know better, young enough not to care.

I don't want to be 25 again.

When I passed the age of 50, I learned how to control my emotions.

Now I am older, I understand we have to accept who we are.

When I look back on my twenties, I just remember being afraid of everything, and in my thirties, I'm actually excited by things. And if things don't work out, you know, by the time you've hit your thirties, you've had your fair share of disappointments.

I remember when I was 33 or 34, it was devastating because I realized I wasn't a kid anymore. The great thing about 40 was that I really felt like I had life experience and knew what I was doing now.

You always feel when you look it straight in the eye that you could have put more into it, could have let yourself go and dug harder.

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

The real sadness of fifty is not that you change so much but that you change so little.

I'd never want to go back to being in my twenties or thirties. I was lost and confused and uncomfortable in my own skin.