Thomas McGuane Quotes

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.

I still feel thirty, except when I try to run.

No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won't hurt

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 more than a boy of 20. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Life was a fairy-tale, then, it is a tragedy now. When I was 43 and John Hay 41 he said life was a tragedy after 40, and I disputed it. Three years ago he asked me to testify again: I counted my graves, and there was nothing for me to say. I am old; I recognize it but I don't realize it. I wonder if a person ever really ceases to feel young - I mean, for a whole day at a time.

Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age, and to imagine right up to the brink of death that life is only beginning. I think that is the only way to keep adding to one's talent, and one's inner happiness.

The latter. She had a good run, Sook said, doing a little shrug. It was his usual response to death at Mapleshade, and it was a safe bet that he felt that way about himself. Like most twice-widowed, Korea-vet, nature-loving, gun-enthusiast, bilingual, weed-connoisseur great grandfathers of five, he'd lived a full life.

A youth without fire is followed by an old age without experience.

For you and I are past our dancing days.

Don't ever get old. With each year that passes, the old Viking idea of jumping off a cliff to one's death looks better and better. The only thing to hope for is that you get so senile that you think you're twenty years old again. That would be fun to relive.

It's okay to grow up, it's just slowing down that's the scary part. Running out of time. It's okay to grow up, but it doesn't mean you have to become like your parents.

I have enough money not to do pictures ever. I'm seventy years old. I don't want to get up at 6:30 in the morning and learn ten pages of dialogue to do with a bunch of creeps I don't like. It's gotta be fun for me.

Just because you're old that doesn't mean you're more forgetful. The same people whose names I can't remember now I couldn't remember fifty years ago. . .

If old age means a crown of thorns, the trick is to wear it jauntily.

Our youth we can have but to-day, We may always find time to grow old.

To make good use of life, one should have in youth the experience of advanced years, and in old age the vigor of youth.

A middle-aged cat will often play as unreservedly as a kitten, though he knows perfectly well it is only a game.

You aren't really old until nothing is fun enough to make you forget the weather.

I am an old man but in many senses a very young man. And this is what I want you to be, young, young all your life.

I love the acquaintance of young people; because, in the first place, I do not like to think myself growing old. In the next place, young acquaintances must last longest, if they do last; and then, sir, young men have more virtue than old men; they have more generous sentiments in every respect.

when you are old and realize that time is running out, you start imagining that you have the cure for all the ills of the world in your hand, and get frustrated because no one pays you any attention.

I have never wanted to live to be old, so old I'd run out of friends or money.

It feels like a perfect night, to dress up like hipsters, and make fun of our exes.

Don't worry about anything. Go out and have a good time.

A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age.