Loss of Relevance Quotes

I suspect the older you get the more invisible you become.

France used to have the ability to inspire princes and kings, send her philosophers to the courts of Europe whose elites spoke our language… now no one listens to her anymore and the universe turns without her …

I never contemplated any kind of existence or identity after my career. I never thought at some point the entertainment industry is going to be through with me. And when it first occurred to me that my career was going to cease to be ascendant, then I freaked out.

Let's face it, I'm a has-been.

I went right from wunderkind to washed up. Old. Been around too long. That's just the way I feel. That's my internal dialogue.

As I said just now, the world has gone past me. I don't blame it; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not the same as they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not the same, business commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of my stock is old-fashioned. I am an old-fashioned man in an old-fashioned shop, in a street that is not the same as I remember it. I have fallen behind the time, and am too old to catch it again.

When you're away for a long time, tastes change, fans move on. You hate to think about it, but it's an ugly fact of life.

That is the tragedy of growing old, Chris. You don't leave the world. It leaves you.

I'm realistic about it. It's been quite some years since I've worked full-time in that area, so I no longer have any material that bears any relevance to my life or the audience. I'd need to take probably a year off, which I wouldn't be prepared to do, so it's a romantic ideal.

One of the sad things about retiring is that you just become increasingly irrelevant. The world flows around you, and you don't seem to be impacting it any longer.

This is what happens when you are on the wrong side of 40. Young adults, who could be your children, are now working with you. I was playing their parents or mentor. I started to think: Oh, I am not part of that group any more.

The French remind me a little bit of an aging actress of the 1940s who is still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it.

I think for a woman, the hardest thing about growing old is becoming invisible. There's something very front and center about being young.