Joan Rivers Quotes

Old age is an insult. It's like being smacked.

I guess I'm depressed. I don't know. I can't explain it. Part of it is the irritability of being 84, and part of it is being not as physically strong as I once was. And part of it is my misunderstanding, I think, of what's going on in the world.

If she had been left alone she would have gone on, in her own way, enjoying herself thoroughly, until people found one day that she had turned imperceptibly into one of those women who have become old without ever having been middle aged: a little withered, a little acid, hard as nails, sentimentally kindhearted, and addicted to religion or small dogs.

The truth is I'm getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.

You just don't make decisions about what you're going to be like when you are old. I know that I am making that decision right now. Every time we perceive ourselves, others, life, the world and God in a certain way, we are deepening the habits that will take over in old age. Every time I act on the insights that I am getting now I am deciding my future and choosing to be a kindly or cynical old man. Our yesterdays lie heavily upon our todays and our todays will lie heavily upon our tomorrows.

It's not the number of years that makes you old, but the idea that you are getting old.

It's this thing that's going on all the time - aging. Paul Auster quotes the poet George Opren on growing old: "What a strange thing to happen to a little boy." Which I think is so profound.

Very odd, old age. Always knew it would happen, if I was lucky. I just didn't expect it so soon.

One of the most surprising things in life is the sudden realization that one has become old

Lust sullies every age of man, but quite extinguishes old age.

Once you cross the 50 you feel like an unsaddled horse.

My mother once said "If you don't pay attention to age, then it won't pay attention to you." And she says it, and it sounds nice, but I don't buy it.

My God, I'm four hundred years old and the most I can do is look three hundred.

Then there's that 'You're only as old as you feel' business, which is true to a point, but you can't be Shirley Temple on the Good Ship Lollipop forever. Sooner or later, dammit, you're old.

Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?

There is no place in which to hide when Age comes seeking for his bride.

Old age is second childhood.

We hope to grow old and we dread old age; that is to say, we love life and we flee from death.

We are but older children, dear, Who fret to find our bedtime near.

After age 70, it's patch, patch, patch.

The only good thing about [aging] is you're not dead.

Often it is fatal to live too long.

The easiest thing for our friends to discover in us, and the hardest thing for us to discover in ourselves, is that we are growing old.