John Petit-Senn Quotes

Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.

Our experience is composed rather of illusions lost than of wisdom acquired.

I know I felt like I was ready to be an adult long before the rest of the world agreed. I'd already realized that a lot of grown-ups didn't know any more than I did, and some of them were even dumber than I was, and even the ones who were smarter weren't using their smarts for things I necessarily considered worthwhile.

Back when I was an idealistic 18-year-old on my way to Chicago, I might have believed that being on the side of virtue would guarantee a good outcome. These many years later, I know better.

What is experience? A poor little hut constructed from the ruins of the palace of gold and marble called our illusions.

An illusion dissipated is an experience gained.

Age doesn't mean anything. Its all in your head. Men get sexier with age. They also get wiser and get experienced.

I must be more sensible and realize that at my age, illusions are hardly permitted and they will always destroy me.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.

I'm a much better mother at 46... than if I were like, 21 or 25.

The French are true romantics. They feel the only difference between a man of forty and one of seventy is thirty years of experience.

Perhaps the biggest myth about cynicism is that it deepens with age. I think what really happens is that experience painfully rips away layers of scales from our eyes, and so we do indeed become more cynical about many of the things we naively accepted when younger.

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.

The more you are getting older, you lose a little something. Of course there is another advantage, because of your long experience you can use it.

When I turned 30, I realized how ignorant I really was. I always thought I had a very accomplished life.

Nothing pleases me more than when somebody who was awe-inspired to be working with me realizes I'm just another schmuck that they're bored of hanging out with on a set. I love that moment. I like it when that persistent illusion is smashed.

I'd like to believe an accumulation of experience has made me a sort of a grown-up person, so I can have judgment and taste and whatever.

Wisdom begins at the end.

I was in a bar and I said to a friend, 'You know, we've become those 40-year-old guys we used to look at and say, 'Isn't it sad?'

When I was 26, 27 years old I was running a kitchen in New York, and I was a raving lunatic. The older you get, you figure out you don't need to do that. You realize at a certain point, there's a certain gravity to what you say and what you do. If that's not enough, all the yelling in the world is not going to matter.

The longer you live, the smarter you get because you've been around. You've seen things. You've gone through different emotional experiences in your own life, and hopefully, you understand things better. And that makes you a better actress.

You can't ask someone to act middle-aged. Someone has to bring their own fatigue to it.

I think, with more experience, I'm probably wiser, calmer. You hope you'll be able to use your knowledge a bit better.

I'm no longer in my 20s, and I think, by default, the rose-colored glasses are off.

It's only through aging and going through heartbreak and loss and successes and failures that you can look back and look at the mistakes some young people make.