When I was fourteen years old, I was amazed at how unintelligent my father was. By the time I turned twenty-one, I was astounded how much he had learned in the last seven years.
This is the point being missed by readers who lament Liquor's lack of hot sex scenes, probably because they aren't old enough to understand that a passionate relationship could be about anything other than sex.
Is 'The Wind in the Willows' a children's book? Is 'Alice in Wonderland?' Is 'Treasure Island?' These are masterpieces which we read with pleasure as children, but with how much more pleasure when we are grown-up.
Death is a distant rumor to the young.
When I was in my 20s, I felt guilty if I didn't exercise - now I feel guilty if I do. It's time I could be spending with my family.
It's so hard when you're young to look at older people and understand that they have been where you are. It's the weirdest thing. You just can't get your head around that, can you? You can't get your head around the fact that someone who is 60 was once 16, if you're 16. But the fact is they have been, and they remember it.
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistake of our own period. And that means the old books.
My dad says that when I was two or three I used to go out dressed as a different character every day. I remember thinking it was perfectly normal to wear different coloured shoes and carry a pink umbrella. But now I've got a goddaughter of that age; I realise it's not normal at all.
When you get to my age, and I'm 66 now, you realize that the world is a madhouse and that most people are operating in fantasy anyway. So once you realise that, it doesn't bother you much.
Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot. Though it causes me frequent pain, I find it very easy to place myself in the shoes of almost any boy, and can conjure my own youth with an ease that is troublesome.
You never think you're as old as you're ever going to get.
New York is a fascinating city. I think it's a very inspiring city, but it's overpowering when you get older. It tires me now. But it's wonderful for young people - very inspiring and full of surprises and full of ideas.
The older I get, the more important my view of the family is.
When I turned 50, I realized I was now going to start counting backwards in terms of the years I had left. Then I turned 60, and I just stopped counting. I don't have a fear of death, but I have an awareness that there's a time limit.
I think one of the greatest joys I have now in my career and in my profession is to be playing at an age where I can appreciate it more than I used to... It's a whole different lens you look through the older you get.
I was probably 35 when I wrote the first story. The voice is kind of a mix in that it has a young voice, but it's also someone who's looking back. I like that kind of double vision.
Very old music is, like, 11th century in my mind. That's very old.
Do you believe in God? Perhaps you aren't old enough. The reason old people believe in God is because they've given up believing in anything else, and one can't exist without faith in something.... God is a sort of burglar. As a young man you knock him down; as an old man, you try to conciliate him because he may knock you down. Moral: don't grow old.
Just the fact that I've lived more, and I'm not concerned about when I am going to get my next job anymore. This business is free-lance and it's not a steady job. Younger, I would have been more preoccupied with myself.
Nirvana is next level. The songs are really cool to connect with on a more mature level, and I don't think I really understood that when I was 15.
When you get older, you look at who has power differently. When you're 21 years old, and you do something ridiculous at the National Art Gallery and get kicked out by the security guard, in your mind, you're speaking truth to power.
Being this side of 40 feels like what I should have felt being this side of 25: in my body, in my heart, happy with my life, and OK with whatever bumps in the road present themselves.
I think in my twenties I tended to think of all people as sort of more or less alike. In now think that people are really different in all these subtle ways that are very important.
I'm sixty-five and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics, but if there were fifteen months in every year, I'd only be forty-eight.
I remind myself that the universe is 15 billion years old, and I'm only 46 years old, so my perspective is sort of limited and fear-based and skewed. So I sort of turn things over to whatever you want to call it - whether it's God, or the universe or the spirit of the universe - and I just sort of turn things over to God and hope that this spirit that has been around for 15 billion years will have a better understanding of how things should be than I do.
