Eighteen Years Old Quotes

When she was eighteen years old she had almost drowned in the Kennebec River, not because of the pummeling current, but because she couldn't come up with a casual phrase with which to call for rescue. "Help!" was such a cliche. By the time she was willing to scream, she had no breath left, and it was just blind luck that somebody saw her gasping and floundering and pulled her to shore. "Why didn't you say something?" they wanted to know, and she said, "I'm not a screamer." "Jesus," said one of them, "couldn't you have made an exception this one time?" "Apparently not," she said. ~ Jincy Willett

Herbenick invited me to sit in on the Human Sexuality class she was about to teach, one of the most popular courses on Indiana's campus. She was, on that day, delivering a lecture on gender disparities in sexual satisfaction. More than one hundred fifty students were already seated in the classroom when we arrived, nearly all of them female, most dressed in sweats, their hair pulled into haphazard ponytails. They listened raptly as Herbenick explained the vastly different language young men and young women use when describing "good sex." "Men are more likely to talk about pleasure, about orgasm," Herbenick said. "Women talk more about absence of pain. Thirty percent of female college students say they experience pain during their sexual encounters as opposed to five percent of men."

The rates of pain among women, she added, shoot up to 70 percent when anal sex is included. Until recently, anal sex was a relatively rare practice among young adults. But as it's become disproportionately common in porn - and the big payoff in R-rated fare such as Kingsman and The To Do List - it's also on the rise in real life. In 1992 only 16 percent of women aged eighteen to twenty-four said they had tried anal sex. Today 20 percent of women eighteen to nineteen have, and by ages twenty to twenty-four it's up to 40 percent. A 2014 study of heterosexuals sixteen to eighteen years old - and can we pause for a moment to consider just how young that is? - found that it was mainly boys ~ Peggy Orenstein

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead. ~ Shirley Jackson

I have a body of an eighteen year old. I keep it in the fridge. ~ Spike Milligan

We're no longer young men. We've lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We've been cut off from real action, from getting on, from progress. We don't believe in those things any more; we believe in the war. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

There aren't many white people around here, just us kids. Seventeen, eighteen years old and flushed with freedom, we don't care about fitting or blending in. We all speak loudly without saying a word. we are a tribe with our dyed hair and rags and big boots and we believe ourselves impervious to everything. The local folks must think we're crazy or lazy or both. ~ Jo Treggiari

It's always been my feeling that God lends you your children until they're about eighteen years old. If you haven't made your points with them by then, it's too late. ~ Betty Ford

After a year or so I really thought I was Howard Hughes. Here I was at eighteen years old, getting all these checks. ~ Michael J. Fox

It's different now but I enjoy it more than I did then. I think I appreciate it more now and I love playing acoustically. This is the way I started. Herb and I met each other forty years ago when we were both eighteen years old, playing bluegrass, and that's what drew me into music, and I enjoyed every particular part of my career. But now I enjoy it because it's the twilight of my career, where I can play what I want and I can play when I want and where I want. And that's the greatest part it all. So it's sort of a right that I've earned. I can record records the way I want to. ~ Chris Hillman

And when you're eighteen years old, it doesn't take that much provoking to get you to a place where you can't stop yourself ~ Anthony Kiedis

The music I like best is kind of frozen in my mind from the Sixties and Seventies. I still listen to the same jazz music I listened to when I was eighteen years old, and like and admire it just as much. ~ Don DeLillo

By the year 2070 we cannot say, or it would be imbecile to do so, that any man alive could understand Shakespearean experience better than Shakespeare, whereas any decent eighteen-year-old student of physics will know more physics than Newton. ~ C.P. Snow

My first real acting job was 'Skins' at eighteen years old, and I just kind of grew into myself in those two years; I would have done terribly if I'd have got that job at sixteen. ~ Luke Pasqualino

Whatever," I said. "The point is, if it's a child small enough to throw, then she lost so much blood here she has to be dead." "She's eighteen years old," Debs said. "Almost nineteen." "Then assuming she's average size, I don't think we want to try to catch somebody who could throw her that hard. If you shoot him, he might get very annoyed and pull off your arms." Deborah ~ Jeff Lindsay

It took a year for us to conceive our second child. This is a common ordeal for the average middle-class American couple that puts off having children until their thirties. We knew so many other couples that had experienced fertility problems and miscarriages that it was more surprising when someone we knew had a child without being consigned to thirty-eight consecutive weeks of bed rest. Turns out God WANTS you to conceive when you're eighteen years old, apparently so that you can spend your twenties miserable and penniless and living in a camper. ~ Drew Magary

The boy who initiated me into smack, who I will call Tim, was at that time eighteen years old, and came from Castlemilk. His life was a helter-skelter ride of drug-fuelled binges. ~ Stephen Richards

The idea that I might be sociopathic was nothing new to me - I'd known for a long time that I didn't connect with other people. I didn't understand them, and they didn't understand me, and whatever emotional language they spoke seemed beyond my capacity to learn. Antisocial personality disorder could not be officially diagnosed until you were eighteen years old - prior to that it was just "conduct disorder." But let's be honest: conduct disorder is just a nice way of telling parents their kids have antisocial personality disorder. I saw no reason to dance around the issue. I was a sociopath, and it was better to deal with it now. ~ Dan Wells

You're sure you want to do this," Galen says, eyeing me like I've grown a tiara of snakes on my head.
"Absolutely." I unstrap the four-hundred-dollar silver heels and spike them into the sand. When he starts unraveling his tie, I throw out my hand. "No! Leave it. Leave everything on."
Galen frowns. "Rachel would kill us both. In our sleep. She would torture us first."
"This is our prom night. Rachel would want us to enjoy ourselves." I pull the thousand-or-so bobby pins from my hair and toss them in the sand. Really, both of us are right. She would want us to be happy. But she would also want us to stay in our designer clothes.
Leaning over, I shake my head like a wet dog, dispelling the magic of hairspray. Tossing my hair back, I look at Galen.
His crooked smile almost melts me where I stand. I'm just glad to see a smile on his face at all. The last six months have been rough. "Your mother will want pictures," he tells me.
"And what will she do with pictures? There aren't exactly picture frames in the Royal Caverns." Mom's decision to mate with Grom and live as his queen didn't surprise me. After all, I am eighteen years old, an adult, and can take care of myself. Besides, she's just a swim away.
"She keeps picture frames at her house though. She could still enjoy them while she and Grom come to shore to-"
"Okay, ew. Don't say it. That's where I draw the line."
Galen laughs and takes off his shoes. I forget all about Mom and Grom ~ Anna Banks

So, what's the story?"
"No story. Just a nightmare."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning, heavy compression lines in his cartilage, severe bruising on his kidneys, liver and lower intestines. Fracture marks on his collar bone, tibia, radius, humerus, scapular, femur and every single one of his ribs have been broken. Don't even get me started on the concussive damage to his skull and brain tissue. Twenty-three percent of this boys body is scared for life. And yet, every organ is functioning normally and his neurological activity is above average. He's eighteen years old and he weights about two bills but remove the scar tissue and he'd weigh about a buck-ten. All in all, I say he lived inside a hydraulic car press, went through the Napoleonic wars and was on board the Hindenburg when it went down in flame and yet he's okay ... this boy just refuses to die. ~ S.L.J. Shortt

Philippa Mitchell was eighteen years old when she left England. She left behind her bedroom, that cocoon of misery in which she'd imprisoned herself; her parents, with their forced, hollow cheerfulness; and the pieces of her heart, smashed to smithereens two years ago with a phone call that came in the middle of the night. ~ F.J. Campbell

I mean, Eighteen years old is the age of consent in Europe and you can go anywhere and do anything you like. In America, it is dumb. At eighteen you should be able to do anything that you like, except get married. ~ John Entwistle

And last, My mom. I don't think you know what you did. You had my brother when you were eighteen years old. Three years later I came out. The odds were stacked against us. Single parent with two boys, By the time you were 21 years old. Everybody told us we wasn't supposed to be here. We moved from apartment to apartment, By ourselves. One of the best memories I have Is when we moved into our first apartment. No bed, No furniture, And we just all sat in the living room And just hugged each other ... 'Cause we thought we made it. ~ Kevin Durant

I came to New York when I was eighteen years old, and the first audition that I ever went to was this huge cattle call at the Equity building where I had gone two days earlier to sign up - I didn't have an agent or anything. ~ Kate Levering

I was eighteen years old, and I thought I loved him. I should have known, but I didn't.
And I don't deserve to be abused for it. Judged for it. Called names.
I don't deserve to have my life ruined. ~ Robin York

My name is Calla Price. I'm eighteen years old, and I'm half of a whole. ~ Courtney Cole

Eight Years Old, Eighteen Years Old
Cassidy was barely conscious when the March Hare, finally finished, gingerly lifted her onto her stump and gently slid a teacup onto her finger. She strained her senses and thought she heard a long sigh and the creak of old bones as he settled at the other end of the table. He stayed there with her through the night. Every time she struggled to open her eyes, she'd see him, the ghostly outline of white ears against the threatening shadows.
Perhaps he had killed her after all. Perhaps he hadn't. There was only one thing Cassidy Evans knew for sure: It had been a marvelous tea party. ~ Carrie Ryan

That's not the way he told it, Tarwater said. He said that when the schoolteacher was seven years old, he had good sense but later it dried up. His daddy was an ass and not fit to raise him and his mother was a whore. She ran away from here when she was eighteen years old.

It took her that long? the stranger said in an incredulous tone. My, she was kind of a ass herself. ~ Flannery O'Connor

I'm 35 but because I've been acting professionally playing women since I was eighteen years old - I never played a teenager - people constantly think I'm like ten years older than I am, which is a little hard on my ego. ~ Laura Benanti

Before his death your father begged a promise from me. He made me swear that I would look after you and your mother."
"And you have," she insisted.
He held up his hand to prevent her from saying more. "And made me give my word that I would never touch you in any manner other than brotherly." Another rueful smile. "So you see, I preferred being able to pretend that I had kept my promise rather than face the truth of breaking my word."
He broke her heart, damn him. "He made me promise not to become attached to you," she confided, continuing with the evening's truthful trend. "It seems Papa saw something that neither one of us did."
"Oh, I saw it. I've seen it since you were eighteen years old and we danced together at some insipid ball. I don't remember where it was, or the day of the week, but I remember that you wore a pale tea-colored gown with Belgian lace, and that you had pearls in your hair."
She couldn't breathe. The tilt of his lips, the bleakness of his gaze, it was all too horrible. "And you wore a red cravat," she whispered. "I thought you looked so rakish in it."
"I was rakish," he admitted. "Your father knew that. ~ Kathryn Smith

Stop whining; you're eighteen years old and you keep acting like a puppy.
Throgh my complaint carried a teasing note, the irriated eddge behind it was real. The focus required by the hunt made me tense. It's not my fault. His plaintive reply came back. I've never had a tail before. I can't figure out what exactly it's supposed to do. It's so distracting. ~ Andrea Cremer

That wasn't Josh Hartnett; that kid was eighteen years old," Kate said.
I told you, they age slower out here. It's all the fresh California air," Val replied.
Yes, because that's exactly what Los Angeles is known for," Kate said dryly. "Clean air. ~ Julie James

Personally I'm hoping to spend the last years of my life plugged into a real life MMORPG simulation that makes me think and feel like I'm 18 again while my 90 year old body lies in a tube somewhere getting fed thru an IV. Be a great way to finish up a life. ~ Drew Curtis

Carpe Diem

By Edna Stewart

Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman did it, why can't I?

The words of Horace, his laconic phrase. Does it amuse me or frighten me?

Does it rub salt in an old wound? Horace, Shakespeare, Robert Frost and Walt Whitman my loves,

we've all had a taste of the devils carpe of forbidden food.

My belly is full of mourning over life mishaps of should have's, missed pleasure, and why was I ever born?

The leaf falls from the trees from which it was born in and cascade down like a feather that tumbles and toil in the wind.

One gush! It blows away. It's trampled, raked, burned and finally turns to ashes which fades away like the leaves of grass.

Did Horace get it right? Trust in nothing?

The shortness of Life is seventy years, Robert Frost and Whitman bared more, but Shakespeare did not.

Butterflies of Curiosities allures me more.

Man is mortal, the fruit is ripe. Seize more my darling!

Enjoy the day. ~ Edna Stewart

Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar. A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable - not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate, too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. "Oh my," she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "it's fruitcake weather! ~ Truman Capote

I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind that become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer among the unanswered letters. ~ Robert Penn Warren

Two hundred years ago an old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a shoemaker's last. And in this same last or shoe, that old woman of the nursery tale with the swarming brood, might very comfortably be lodged, she and all her progeny. ~ Herman Melville

The Old Woman asked, "Here you are, dear Youth, you are looking at the Garden and do not know that it is an evil Garden. Here you are waiting for the Beautiful Woman and do not know that her beauty is destructive. You have been living in my room for two years and never before have you become so engrossed as you have today. Apparently your turn has come too. Go away from the window before it is too late, do not breathe the evil fragrance of these deceitful flowers and do not wait for the Beautiful Woman to appear below your window and enchant you. She will come, she will enchant you, and you will follow her against your will.

Speaking thus, the Old Woman lit two candles on the table where some books were lying, banged the window shut and drew the curtain tightly across the window. The curtain rings scraped lightly along the bronze curtain rod, and the yellow linen of the curtain fluttered and once again lay motionless - and the room became cheerful, comfortable and peaceful. And it seemed that there was no longer any garden beyond the window, nor was there any sorcery in the world, and everything was simple, ordinary, and would remain so once and for all.

("The Poison Garden") ~ Valery Bryusov

How can you become old in spirit? Only by carrying the past, isn't it? If you carry sixty years of burden with you, you're sixty years old. If you don't carry anything, you're like a newborn. The physical body may develop limitations, but the way you are has no limitations. It simply has no limitations. You are this many years old or that many years old simply because you carry that many years of garbage with you. ~ Jaggi Vasudev

There is a difference between saying goodbye and letting go. Goodbye is not permanent. You can meet years later as old friends and share what happened in your life. You can smile and laugh about all the nonsense that you both went through. However, letting go is being okay with never seeing this person ever again ... being okay with never knowing how their life turned out ... being okay with fifty or more years of silence ... being okay with running into that person at a grocery store and having them not acknowledge your presence. This is the part of life that doesn't sit well with me and never will. It tears my heart in pieces, robs me of gratitude, drains me of anything positive and eats at the faith that holds on. It goes against kindness. ~ Shannon L. Alder

The prints shop manager, a balding man of about thirty years old, dressed in a plaid work shirt and faded jeans, looked very shocked when he saw the headline text. "Sydney Tar Ponds, Is It As Dangerous As People Say? Well," he exclaimed, glancing at the front photo, which featured the Sydney Steel Corporation, along with its plumes of orange smog. "You know, most people your age are really against that mill, as if it's a disease. We have university students protesting every few weeks or so… strangely enough, the ones who have parents who rely on that steel mill to pay the bills."

"What about the pollution?" Wendy questioned, almost accusingly, as if it was his fault. "What if dangerous chemicals are in the environment?"

"Hey kid, I don't even work at the mill, never have, but my father, my uncle, their father, cousins, all worked there," the prints shop man argued, placing the newspapers in a cardboard box and taping it shut. "When it comes down to all that 'go green' crap, you have to ask yourself, is it worth risking a person's income, their job, their family… their life? I'm not saying you're wrong, but these newspapers might have a point. ~ Rebecca McNutt

I've always hate child stars, starting from way back when, when I was a child. The first child star I saw was Shirley Temple. She was six years old, two foot six and the biggest star in Hollywood. She wore ribbons in her hair, and frilly little pinafores and shiny patent-leather tap shoes - just like the boys in Glee do. ~ Joan Rivers

Two weeks ago, Aaron and Isaac, I learned your mother Laura has breast cancer. My heart feels impaled. These words, so useless and feeble. Laura is only thirty-five years old. Her next birthday will be in only three days. I write this letter to you, my sons, with the hope that one day in the future you will read it and understand what happened to our family.

Together, your mother and I have created and nurtured an unbreakable bond that has transformed us into an unlikely team. A Chicano from El Paso, Texas. A Jew from Concord, Massachusetts. I want you to know your mother. She has given me hope when I have felt none; she has offered me kindness when I have been consumed by bitterness. I believe I have taught her how to be tough and savvy and how to achieve what you want around obstacles and naysayers.

Our hope is that the therapies we are discussing with her doctors will defeat her cancer. But a great and ominous void has suddenly engulfed us at the beginning of our life as a family. This void suffocates me. ~ Sergio Troncoso

My mom said:'Don't put your finger in your brother's ear! If you want to know how that quarter trick is done, go ask the magician.' So I tugged on The Great Arturo's pant leg until he finally taught me how. That was my first magic trick! I was five years old. ~ Autumn Morning Star

Maybe this year, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives not looking for flaws, but looking for potential. ~ Ellen Goodman

I was lonely, deadly lonely. And I was to find out then, as I found out so many times, over and over again, that women especially are social beings, who are not content with just husband and family, but must have a community, a group, an exchange with others. Young and old, even in the busiest years of our lives, we women especially are victims of the long loneliness.
It was years before I woke up without that longing for a face pressed against my breast, an arm about my shoulder. The sense of loss was there.
I never was so unhappy, never felt so great the sense of loneliness. No matter how many times I gave up mother, father, husband, brother, daughter, for His sake, I had to do it over again.
Tamar is partly responsible for the title of this book in that when I was beginning it she was writing me about how alone a mother of young children always is. I had also just heard from an old woman who lived a long and full life, and she too spoke of her loneliness ~ Dorothy Day

Five golden years, Heart of Mine, have we walked the way of life together, and there is not an hour I would have changed; there is no moment when I would have you other than you have been. It is the fashion these days, I know, to say that love ends at the altar, but it is not so. You and I have found the old dream of the world divinely true. It is neither a poet's fancy nor a trick of the imagination, but a thing of fadeless and unending beauty. ~ Myrtle Reed

I think there's still a little bit of that 9 year-old in me and I'm pretty happy. ~ Peter Jackson

When I went to Philadelphia I was 26 years old and really sitting on top of the world. Family life, a professional career, plenty of friends and associates, and a good reputation, a wish list that could be the envy of many. ~ Julius Erving

years old and widowed. No children. He'd sold his insurance business ~ Janet Evanovich

My secret weapon is my anger. That's what stimulates me as an artist. I want change. I want it yesterday. I'm pissed off at America. Society. American movies. American TV. American culture. American politicians. Capitalism. I'm a little like my old man in that way only I'm a recovered drunk. He wasn't. I should have been dead years ago like my brother but somehow I dodged the bullet and it gave me something to say. Impatience and rage are always just beneath the surface for me. ~ Dan Fante

The spectacle takes us away from our routines. For at least a time, we feel part of something big, colorful, exciting. It is perhaps understandable that civilians are often more enthusiastic during wartime than soldiers who have experienced battle. The soldiers know that war is often boring and dirty as well as terrifying and colorful. Even so, after some years, an old soldier like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., could brush aside his earlier description of the pain, boredom, and death of war and declare that "its message was divine." The stench disappears, but the spectacle remains in memory's eye. ~ Nel Noddings

The first truth about mortals is that none of us wants to die, but all of us are going to. It's in the name – mortals – the dying ones. If you don't understand that bit, you won't understand the rest of it. Here you are, some 5-hundred years old and you haven't yet figured out something that a 3 year old human is starting to understand. You see, as soon as we can even think, our brains are wrapping themselves around that One Truth, that one offensive, undeniable, irrevocable Truth. The rest of our existence grows up in the shadow of a dead leaning tree, which will at one point in the not unimaginable future fall and crush all that has grown up beneath it…



…Rescue them for what? Why from dying! Does that mean they won't die? No, it just means they won't die today. At best, we're talking about delaying the inevitable death sentence laid on our friends. Now how does this particular truth strike you, Mister Immortal…?



…And why? Why not merely stand now and fall sooner rather than later? Because there is something precious and sacred about rearguard action. It's an active retreat that's been repeated valiantly and ceaselessly from the beginning of mortal time. It just seems wrong to give up. It seems invalid and invalorous. More importantly, it's indecent to simply lie down and be overrun…



…Instead we rage against it and sing our defiance through bloodied teeth. Somehow, in our pointless battle, we find moment ~ J. Robert King

I was always small. I was a leadoff hitter growing up, until I was 13 or 14 years old and had a little growth spurt and started hitting home runs. ~ Ryan Braun

I started dancing when I saw Fred Astaire in 'Flying Down to Rio,' at approximately nine years old. Fred Astaire influenced me, more than anything, to be in 'show business.' ~ Stanley Donen

I got into nuclear science when I was about 10 years old I was fascinated by the stuff. I was fascinated by the reactions and the power inside these atoms that we had the capability to unlock. ~ Taylor Wilson

Maybe I would get the chance to be financed for a small romantic comedy, but a war movie by a 28-year-old woman about Japanese soldiers? No one was going to go for that. It's easy to just steal an idea because it's very safe. ~ Julie Delpy

Sometimes they almost made me feel glad that I had a few extra years to play my depression out with therapy and other means, because I think its useful in youth- unless suicide or drug abuse are the alternatives- to have some faith in the mind to cure itself, to not rush to doctors or diagnosis's ... I sometimes worry that part of what creates depression in young people is their own, and their parents, and the whole worlds impatience with allowing the phases of life to run their course. We will very likely soon be living in a society that confuses disease with normal life if the panic and rush to judgment and labeling do not slow down a bit. Somewhere between the unbelievable tardiness that the medical profession was guilty of in administering proper treatment to me and the eagerness to with which practitioners prescribe Ritalin for 8 year old boys and Paxil for 14 year old girls, there is a sane course of action. ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel

I could do anything - be anything.
I could be a blackberry farmer.
I could worry about phone bills and nipping out to the corner shop for milk and bread of a morning.
Little Declan Jr. could learn to walk and talk with his real father, alive and well, and I could teach him how to wear a waistcoat with just the right amount of tragic charm, take him to school in a few years, maybe makehim a little sister to look out for, someone to keep him on his toes. He could play a sport - tennis, maybe, or football. I'd attend parent-teacher meetings and have after-work drinks with the neighbors, talking about how well so-and-so is doing, and why yes, Declan Jr. is learning to play the piano. Top of his class, you know - he has his mother's grace…
I could see all of that, as clear in my mind as sunlight on fresh snow, and so much more.
Just living day to day. One morning we could have picnics, my family and I, next to blue glacial lakes. One afternoon my son would be old enough to meet a girl, get in a fight, need to shave. One evening his sister will need help with her homework, and he'll complain, but he'll help.
And then one day the Elder Gods would descend from a blood-red sky in chariots lashed together from bone and flame and take away all my blackberries. ~ Joe Ducie

I'm excited for people to realize that I'm 25 years old and not a teenager anymore ... even though I still look 18 and can't get into a bar to save my life! ~ Brittany Snow

I was extremely shy of approaching my hero but he, as I found out, was sorely in need of company. By then almost completely blind, he was claustrated and even a little confused and this may help explain the rather shocking attitude that he took to the blunt trauma that was being inflicted in the streets and squares around him. 'This was my country and it might be yet,' he intoned to me when the topic first came up, as it had to: 'But something came between it and the sun.' This couplet he claimed (I have never been able to locate it) was from Edmund Blunden, whose gnarled hand I had been so excited to shake all those years ago, but it was not the Videla junta that Borges meant by the allusion. It was the pre-existing rule of Juan Perón, which he felt had depraved and corrupted Argentine society. I didn't disagree with this at all - and Perón had victimized Borges's mother and sister as well as having Borges himself fired from his job at the National Library - but it was nonetheless sad to hear the old man saying that he heartily preferred the new uniformed regime, as being one of 'gentlemen' as opposed to 'pimps.' This was a touch like listening to Evelyn Waugh at his most liverish and bufferish. (It was also partly redeemed by a piece of learned philology or etymology concerning the Buenos Aires dockside slang for pimp: canfinflero. 'A canfinfla, you see,' said Borges with perfect composure, 'is a pussy or more exactly a cunt. So a canfinflero is a trafficker in cunt: in Ang ~ Christopher Hitchens

THE HOUSE straightened up and then go on and fix some of that chicken salad now, say Miss Leefolt. It's bridge club day. Every fourth Wednesday a the month. A course I already got everthing ready to go - made the chicken salad this morning, ironed the tablecloths yesterday. Miss Leefolt seen me at it too. She ain't but twenty-three years old and she like hearing herself tell me what to do. She already got the blue dress on I ironed this morning, the one with sixty-five pleats on the waist, so tiny I got to squint through my glasses to iron. I don't hate much in life, ~ Kathryn Stockett

My beloved Eudosia [a member of Buckley's household staff], who is Cuban, very large, quite old, and altogether superstitious, and speaks only a word or two of English (even though she has been with us for 19 years), is quite certain that the gentleman who raped the 16-year-old girl in New Caanan three years ago and escaped has successfully eluded the police only because of his resourceful determination to ravage Eudosia before he dies. Accordingly she demanded, and I gave her, a shotgun, into which I have inserted two empty shells. Still, Eudosia with blank cartridges is more formidable than Eugene McCarthy with The Bomb. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

I knew I wanted to be a performer and do comedy at 5 years old. My dad's wife, Marlene Rosenbaum, was boiling water and she goes, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I said, "A comedian." And she laughed and laughed because she thought that was the cutest, funniest thing ... ~ Sandra Bernhard

And then what did you do, Lord Oliver? Karl's eight-year-old daughter gazed up at him in awe, as though this were the best story she had ever heard. ~ Jessica Day George

If love was the result of having caught a glimpse of another's loneliness, then he had loved Mikal since they were both ten years old. ~ Nadeem Aslam

I actually became a Christian in my rookie year on tour when I was 16 years old. ~ Michael Chang

Two generations ago only a few unfortunate children ever saw anyone hit over the head with a brick, shot, rammed by a car, blown up, immolated, raped or tortured. Now all children, along with their elders, see such images every day of their lives and are expected to enjoy them ... The seven-year-old who hides his eyes in the family cops-and-robbers drama is desensitized four years later to a point where he crunches potato chips through the latest video nasty. ~ Penelope Leach

They're old; they're about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now"
"But God doesn't change"
"Men do though ~ Aldous Huxley

I think the gift of my mother's death, if anything so terrible can be said to have an upside to it, is that I was always keenly aware that life was fleeting, and that you'd better live while you have the chance. As I say in the book, since I was 19 years old I felt like I was living for two, and when I out-lived my mother, when I got into my forties, it felt like a miracle to me. ~ Anna Quindlen

When you're 8 years old, and you've become subconsciously familiar with the layout and design of Black Sparrow books, and you know the difference between Miles Davis and John Coltrane, something is bound to stick. ~ Patrick DeWitt

The stripped and shapely Maple grieves The ghosts of her Departed leaves. The ground is hard, As hard as stone. The year is old, The birds are flown. ~ John Updike

When I was 18 years old I knew pretty much what I wanted to do in life. When I was 18 I knew I wanted to be a pro bodybuilder. ~ Branch Warren

For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed hot woman of 40 +, there is a balding, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some 22-year-old waitress. ~ Andy Rooney

I'm a working mom. I've been working since I was 14 years old. ~ Sarah Steelman

Their world is governed by children, little despots whose needs - school and camp and activities and tutors - dictate every decision, and will for the next ten, fifteen, eighteen years[...] Having children has provided their adulthood with an instant and nonnegotiable sense of purpose and direction. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

Remember how excited you were when you turned five years old. Today, you should be 10 times that excited. Happy 50th birthday! ~ Franklin P. Adams

There were two good fellows I used to know.
How distant it all appears! We played together in football weather, And messed together for years: Now one of them's wed, and the other's dead So long that he's hardly missed Save by us, who messed with him years ago: But we're all in the old School List. ~ James Kenneth Stephen

Really?" I whispered.
He crossed his arms on his chest and stated, "Babe, you think I found the woman of my
dreams at forty-five years old and I'm gonna let anything happen to her, think again. That's a long fuckin' time to wait for what you want. I waited. I
found it. I'm pullin' out all the stops to take care of it. I know you feel the same for me so I'm doin' the same to keep me safe for you. So yeah, really, I
called Delgado. I made peace and asked a favor. His woman is in your posse so she wouldn't be doin' cartwheels, he said no and something went
down with you or, for you, me. And he isn't dumb, he's a man who knows to collect favors and he's a man
whose business means he often has the need to call markers. So his ear's to the ground and his eyes are open so if a cop isn't cruisin' by your
house or bakery, one of Lee's boys or one of Hawk's commandos are. Smart people pay attention to who's cruisin' around people they want to fuck
with and smart people will see cops, Nightingale's men and Delgado's crazy motherfuckers and, my hope is, they'll steer clear. So, there you go.
Now you got a full explanation of what I mean when I say you're on radar."
I heard all he said, I really did.
But I was stuck at the beginning part where he told me I was the woman of his dreams. ~ Kristen Ashley

Tell me about the war," he pressed cautiously. She smiled again and began, "Well . . ." The sentence ended there. Her tongue moved but no words emerged. He wanted to say, Tell me because I'd like to tell my grandchildren one day. Tell me because it happened to you, and so I should know. Tell me because it will bring me closer to you, and I want to be close to you. But he was fifteen years old, and he didn't know how to express thoughts like these. He only knew that he wanted to know. He could tell that she would tell him anything but anything, only if he could stand it please don't make her talk about that. And though he grasped how important it was for him to know - even if everyone in the family had acquiesced not to trouble Grandmother about it - he couldn't bring himself to make her. So he said to her: "Forget about the war. Tell me about how you and Grandfather fell in love. ~ Boris Fishman