Old Folks Quotes

The wooden shelves were tall and packed with worn covers of books read many times over. Pages were yellowed and paperbacks had arched spines like old sway-backed horses. It was an old folks' home for secondhand books, with that smell of old newsprint and slightly musty wood smell. ~ Nathan Fillion

When old folks laugh,
they consider the promise
of dear painless death, and generously
forgive life for happening
to them. ~ Maya Angelou

If someone says to you, 'Go to an old-folks' home,' that's kind of ridiculous, because a lot of old people are doing terrific things for society. ~ Myron Scholes

Well enough for old folks to rise early, because they have done so many mean things all their lives they can't sleep anyhow. ~ Mark Twain

The time of dangling insects arrived. White houses with caterpillars dangling from the eaves. White stones in driveways. You can walk at night down the middle of the street and hear women talking on the telephone. Warmer weather produces voices in the dark. They are talking about their adolescent sons. How big, how fast. The sons are almost frightening. The quantities they eat. The way they loom in doorways. These are the days that are full of wormy bugs. They are in the grass, stuck to the siding, hanging in the hair, hanging from the trees and eaves, stuck to the window screens. The women talk long-distance to grandparents of growing boys. They share the Trimline phone, beamish old folks in hand-knit sweaters on fixed incomes.
What happens to them when the commercial ends? ~ Don DeLillo

You a Catholic, Harry?" O'Neill asked. "I was. Can't see it any more." "You know something?" O'Neill offered after a pause. "Religion is for punks and old folks. When you're a punk you need it because you don't know any better and it straightens you up. And when you're old you need it for comfort before you check out. But in between it's no good. ~ Anton Myrer

After being rationed to a single ball, a whole box of them gave me a delightful feeling of sudden wealth. French politicians must have a similar sensation when elected to high office and permitted to dip into the chateaux and limousines and government-issue caviar. No wonder they cling to power long after they should be tucked away in an old folks' home. I'd do the same. ~ Peter Mayle

Revolution ain't nothing but an extent of evolution; Evolution is a fact of nature. So when old folks tell me that they don't understand hip hop and the music is too loud, well I guess it means you're not supposed to be in there. ~ Dick Gregory

I think all old folk's homes should have striptease. If I ran one I'd have a striptease every week. ~ Cynthia Payne

The real revolution is always concerned with the least glamorous stuff. With raising a reading level from second grade to third. With simplifying history and writing it down (or reciting it) for the old folks. With helping illiterates fill out a food-stamps form - for they must eat, revolution or not. ~ Alice Walker

You can't ever take your love for granted. It's like a flower than needs sun, water, and food to survive. Without them, it cannot bloom. And besides, it's never too late to fall in love all over again, even for us old folks. ~ Jacob Z. Flores

Easy money had no weight: you didn't feel you'd earned it. What you get for a song you won't have for long, the old folks used to say, and they were right. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

They came to a bend in the road where it turned more west than north, and there at the turn was a squat fir tree that for the last quarter mile Hadrian had suspected might be a bear.

Coincidentally, at the same time as they passed the tree, Hadrian finally reached the conclusion that Arcadius was senile. The man was old to be sure. Older than anyone he'd ever met. Older even than his father, who at the time of his departure was the oldest man in Hintindar-though everyone said he carried his age well. The professor didn't carry his age well at all, and old folks sometimes went batty. One didn't even need to be that old. Hadrian knew a warlord in the Gur Em who spoke of himself as if he were another person in the room. Sometimes he got in arguments to the point of refusing to speak to himself anymore and insisted others relay messages "to that idiot." And the warlord was nowhere near Arcadius's age. The best that could be said for Arcadius was that he carried his insanity well. So well in fact that it took Hadrian all the way to the bear tree to conclude the professor was crazy.

He had to be. There was just no sense in asking him to pair up with Royce. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

When you get real old, honey, you realize there are certain things that just don't matter anymore. You lay it all on the table. There's a saying, 'Only little children and old folks tell the truth.' ~ Sarah Louise Delany

The TV shouted an old black-and-white film he didn't recognize, wheelchairs facing it like church pews. ~ Sere Prince Halverson

In no sense are the robot dogs, automated vacuum cleaners and old-folks lifting machines just examples of yet another consumer society with nothing meaningful left to spend its disposable income on. No, robots are the future. They have been for generations. ~ Our Man In Abiko

Up until that point everyone who gets hurt winds up fine. There's not actual loss. And then Voldemort kills Cedric Diggory and suddenly everything becomes real. We have to face the possibility that we won't all live long enough to lose our hair or become those crotchety old folks who yell at dumb kids like us. Good people die and bad people don't always get what they deserve. Death stops being this abstract concept that happens to other people, and becomes something that could happen to the people we love. Or even to us. ~ Shaun David Hutchinson

Tony Campolo and I both speak a lot, and we began to notice that there were some crowds of old folks that desperately needed some youthful energy, and there were other crowds of young folks that desperately needed some aged wisdom. ~ Shane Claiborne

Read my letter to the old folks, and give my love to them, and tell my brothers to be always watching unto prayer, and when the good old ship of Zion comes along, to be ready to step aboard. ~ Harriet Tubman

After, Mam,' I say. 'What happens when you pass away?"
I couldn't bear her being a ghost. Couldn't take her sitting in the kitchen, invisible. Couldn't take seeing Pop walk around her without touching her cheek, without bending to kiss her on her neck.
'It's like walking through a door, Jojo.'
'But you won't be no ghost, huh, Mam?' I have to ask even though I know the telling hurts her. Even though I feel like speaking's bringing her leaving closer. Death, a great mouth set to swallow.
'Can't say for sure. But I don't think so. I think that only happens when the dying's bad. Violent. The old folks always told me that when someone dies in a bad way, sometimes it's so awful even God can't bear to watch, and then half your spirit stays behind and wanders, wanting peace the way a thirsty man seeks water.' She frowns: two fishhooks dimpling down. 'That ain't my way.'
'That don't mean I won't be here, Jojo. I'll be on the other side of the door. With everybody else that's gone before. Your uncle Given, my mama and daddy, Pop's mama and daddy.'
'How?'
'Because we don't walk no straight lines. It's all happening at once. All of it. We all here at once. My mama and daddy and they mamas and daddies.' Mam looks to the wall, closes her eyes. 'My son. ~ Jesmyn Ward

Sometimes guns really matter. Protecting those who need protection - children, women, minorities in rough parts of town, old folks living in places where cops aren't nearby. Guns are true empowerment for the powerless. ~ Maya Angelou

I am not in favor of immortality. I believe death for humans is the way of getting rid of accumulated errors - as in trial and error. Without death, the old folks would start to gang up on the babies (the new trials). Immortality
> immortal mistakes. ~ Esther Dyson

Old folks don't lie to their friends. They don't have the time. ~ P.S. Meronek

We old folks have to find our cushions and pillows in our tankards. Strong beer is the milk of the old. ~ Martin Luther

This was the last time I ever saw my mother alive. Just the same, this picture gets all mixed up in my mind with pictures I had of her when she was younger. The way I always see her is the way she used to be on Sunday afternoon, say, when the old folks were talking after the big Sunday dinner. I always see her wearing pale blue. She'd be sitting on the sofa. And my father would be sitting in the easy chair, not far from her. And the living room would be full of church folks and relatives. There they sit, in chairs all around the living room, and the night is creeping up outside, but nobody knows it yet. You can see the darkness growing against the windowpanes and you hear the street noises every now and again, or maybe the jangling beat of a tambourine from one of the churches close by, but it's real quiet in the room. For a moment nobody's talking, but every face looks darkening, like the sky outside. And my mother rocks a little from the waist, and my father's eyes are closed. Everyone is looking at something a child can't see. For a minute they've forgotten the children. Maybe a kid is lying on the rug, half asleep. Maybe somebody's got a kid in his lap and is absent-mindedly stroking the kid's head. Maybe there's a kid, quiet and big-eyed, curled up in a big chair in the corner. The silence, the darkness coming, and the darkness in the faces frighten the child obscurely. He hopes that the hand which strokes his forehead will never stop-- will never die. He hopes that ther ~ James Baldwin

Here's the second joke: Two psychiatrists meet on the street and say hello. "How are you?" asks one. "Eh, not so good," says the other. "I had a stupid misunderstanding, a slip of the tongue. I was visiting my mother out at the old folks' home. We were having lunch and I asked her to pass me the salt, but instead I said, 'You fucking bitch you ruined my life. ~ David Rakoff

Comfort for herself. Yes, she would love Logan after they were married. She could see no way for it to come about, but Nanny and the old folks had said it, so it must be so. Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what ~ Zora Neale Hurston

Isabel, remember we used to talk about a honeymoon in Spain?"
"Of course."
"It woulda been a blast. I took a walk last night. Two in the morning, it felt like two in the afternoon. Traffic. People on the street: families, old folks on benches. The bars and restaurants were full, everybody carrying on. Hard to believe there's an economic crisis."
"Maybe they should shut up, get some sleep, and fix the mess. ~ Sebastian Rotella

Little boy and little girl.I don't know how old. Sweetest family in the world, of you listen to the old folks around here." Xander was stunned. "And nobody knows what happened to them?"
"Some say they high-tailed it to Europe." She raised her eyebrows at him. "Most believe he took them somewhere and killed them. Then took his own life."
Dad forced a smile. "Just old rumors," he said. ~ Robert Liparulo

In winter's tedious nights sit by the fire With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales Of woeful ages, long ago betid ~ William Shakespeare

Ah, I often think it's wi' th' old folks as it is wi' the babies; they're satisfied wi' looking, no matter what they're looking at. It's God A'mighty's way o' quietening 'em, I reckon, afore they go to sleep. ~ George Eliot

Laughing like crazy
the child goes back to the city
gives birth to monsters
creates earthquakes
hairy women run naked
old folks who look like fetuses laugh and smoke. ~ Nicanor Parra

How do you do that?" I asked. "What do witches eat?" "Witches loves pork meat," she said. "They loves rice and potatoes. They loves black-eyed peas and cornbread. Lima beans, too, and collard greens and cabbage, all cooked in pork fat. Witches is old folks, most of them. They don't care none for low-cal. You pile that food on a paper plate, stick a plastic fork in it, and set it down by the side of a tree. And that feeds the witches." The ~ John Berendt

Despite the fact that social security is a fraud in every respect, there are many who, ignoring the evidence, support it because "we must not let the old folks suffer destitution." This implies that before 1937 it was habitual for children to cast their nonproductive parents into the gutter. There is no evidence for that, and there are no records supporting the implication that all over sixty-five regularly died of hunger. The present crop of children are just as considerate of their old folks as were the pre-1937 vintage, and it is a certainty that if their envelopes were not tapped they would be in better position to show their filial devotion. Besides, if the government did not take so much of our earnings, we would be better able to save for our later days. ~ Frank Chodorov

Among this people there is no leisure class. We often forget that in the United States over half the youth and adults are not in the world earning incomes, but are making homes, learning of the world, or resting after the heat of the strife. But here ninety-six per cent are toiling; no one with leisure to turn the bare and cheerless cabin into a home, no old folks to sit beside the fire and hand down traditions of the past; little of careless happy childhood and dreaming youth. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

The old folks say there is only black and white. That may do for their tidy lives, but it doesn't apply to all of us. We, Supergirls for real and the wretched creature at my feet, live in the gray and the mist. We may never see the stars, but we believe in the dream of them. ~ Mav Skye

What are we Democrats fighting for? We are not fighting for salvation and going to heaven. But we are fighting for Medicaid, Medicare, health care, education, jobs, helping old folks. ~ Charles B. Rangel

That was one of the best, exciting things for me to play with them. They were very young and eager to go. I'd been playing with a band that was mostly old folks that had been together so long we couldn't do anything to excite each other. ~ Earl Scruggs

A conquering force sustained the old folks and now centers us. Forming a collective of comeback saints, let us rally behind them and move forward. We're called to a new awakening and application of what we've learned from those who've looked over Jordan. ~ Deborah L. Parker

Things are NEVER what they seem, Pa, I thought. I used to think they were, but I was wrong or stupid or blind or something. Old folks are forever complaining about their failing eyesight, but I think your vision gets better as you get older. Mine surely was. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

You young people never say anything. And us old folks don't know how to stop talking. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

In the middle of a conversation, she'll frequently say something like, "Young people are heartless, they don't have any respect anymore." I nod agreement in hopes that she'll stop right there, but secretly I'm convinced that the heart is the same as it's always been; there's simply less hypocrisy, that's all. Young people aren't naturally selfish, any more than old folks are naturally wise. Your age doesn't have anything to do with whether you're sensitive or shallow; it's a question of the path your life takes. ~ Susanna Tamaro

In these days the young folks is all copy-cats, 'fraid to death they won't be all just alike; as for the old folks, they pray for the advantage o' bein' a little different. ~ Sarah Orne Jewett

Furniture is like that. Used and enjoyed as intended, it absorbs the experience and exudes it back into the atmosphere, but if simply bought for effect and left to languish in a corner, it vibrates with melancholy. Furnishings in museums ... are as unspeakably tragic as the unvisited inmates of old folk's homes. The untuned violins and hardback books used to bring 'character' to postwar suburban pubs crouch uncomfortably in their imposed roles like caged pumas in a zoo. The stately kitchen that is never or rarely used to bring forth lavish feasts for appreciative audiences turns inward and cold. ~ Will Wiles

If the gardinel's an old folk's tale, I'm honest to tell you it's a true one.
Few words about them are best, I should reckon. They look some way like a shed or a cabin, snug and rightly made, except the open door could be a mouth, the two little windows might could be eyes. Never you'll see one on the main roads or near towns; only back in the thicketty places, by high trails among tall ridges, and they show themselves there when it rains and storms and a lone farer hopes to come to a house to shelter him. ~ Manly Wade Wellman

Old folks live on memory, young folk live on hope. ~ Gayla Reid

The two best interview subjects are children under 10 and people over 70 for the same reason: they say the first thing that comes to their mind. The children don't know what they're saying and the old folks don't care. ~ Art Linkletter

The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago. ~ Louis Armstrong

Get old, you might as well not worry about your dignity. Anybody talks about dignity for old folks has never been around one as far as I can tell. You can keep your spunk, but you have to give up your vanity early on. ~ Sue Grafton

It's been a while since I've written a novel aimed at the adult market, but I never sit down and say to myself, 'Okay, now I'm going to write something for us old folks.' I get gripped by an idea, and I go where the idea takes me. ~ Rick Yancey

THE GHOST OF THE AUTHOR'S MOTHER HAS A CONVERSATION WITH HIS FIANCÉE ABOUT HIGHWAYS

...and down south, honey. When the side of the road began to swell with dead and dying things, that's when us black children knew it was summer. Daddy didn't keep clocks in the house. Ain't no use when the sky round those parts always had some flames runnin' to horizon, lookin' like the sun was always out. back when I was a little girl, I swear, them white folk down south would do anything to stop another dark thing from touching the land, even the nighttime. We ain't have streetlights, or some grandmotherly voice riding through the fields on horseback tellin' us when to come inside. What we had was the stomach of a deer, split open on route 59. What we had was flies resting on the exposed insides of animals with their tongues touching the pavement. What we had was the smell of gunpowder and the promise of more to come, and, child, that'll get you home before the old folks would break out the moonshine and celebrate another day they didn't have to pull the body of someone they loved from the river. I say 'river' because I want you to always be able to look at the trees without crying. When we moved east, I learned how a night sky can cup a black girl in its hands and ask for forgiveness. My daddy sold the pistol he kept in the sock drawer and took me to the park. Those days, I used to ask him what he feared, and he always said "the bottom of a good glass." And then he stopped answer ~ Hanif Abdurraqib

Over and over and with the least provocation, they pulled from their stock of stories tales about the old folks, their grands and great-grands; their fathers and mothers. Dangerous confrontations, clever manoeuvres. Testimonies to endurance, wit, skill and strength. Tales of luck and outrage. But why were there no stories to tell of themselves? About their own lives they shut up. Had nothing to say, pass on. As though past heroism was enough of a future to live by. As though, rather than children, they wanted duplicates. ~ Toni Morrison

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man. ~ Seamus Heaney

Some folks never handle the truth without scratching it. ~ Austin O'Malley

Sitting around on your big fat gluteus maximus talking about the good old days. The good old days are right this second. You've got to exercise VIG-OR-OUSLY! Life is tough. Life is a challenge. Life is a battlefield ... Life is an athletic event, and you must train for it. ~ Jack LaLanne

I don't want to live here. I want my old life back and I'll do anything for it. ~ M.M. Lindelo

The old saying that, "you are what you eat" extends beyond the body, and includes experiences. ~ Bryant McGill

Jazz is like a big secret club. The mainstream media doesn't pay any attention to it; it's, like, 1 percent of the music market - no one cares. Why? Because the majority of jazz is old. ~ Robert Glasper

It took so long to find you ... and now I don't want it to change. I want it all set in amber. I want us and nobody else in the most selfish way you can imagine. I can't help it
I'm old-fashioned. I believe marriage is between a man and a man. ~ Armistead Maupin

When I use the word rebel for the artist, I do not refer to revolutionary or to such things as taking over the dean's office; that is a different matter. Artists are generally soft-spoken persons who are concerned with their inner visions and images. But that is precisely what makes them feared by any coercive society. For they are the bearers of the human being's age-old capacity to be insurgent. ~ Rollo May

In my school, he thought, they learn bitterness and frustration and how to grow old. ~ Graham Greene

[Jack:] 'I was twenty-four when I met Walker. Do you know I've never lived alone? I'm forty-four years old and I've never lived alone. The first few weeks Walker was gone, I didn't know what to do with myself. I'd stay in the store until late, pick up some takeout, and just watch television until I fell asleep.'
[... Melody:] 'Sounds kind of great right now.'
Jack looked at her and nodded. 'It is kind of great. That's my point. I miss Walker. I miss him terribly and I don't know what's going to happen. But for the first time ever, I'm only accountable to myself and I like it. I'm not proud of why I'm at this point, but I'm doing my best to figure it out, and I'm kind of enjoying it, parts of it anyway. ~ Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

The notion of a country cottage settled in her thoughts as a watercolor, red bricks, climbing roses, the house the most intelligent of the three little pigs built, but with some age on it now; and the place they found in western Massachusetts wasn't far off, solid enough to withstand huffs and puffs, small enough to feel manageable, large enough to hold visiting grandchildren, old enough to inspire optimism about what might, improbably, endure. ~ Robin Black

Fish sense, applied in the field, is what the old Zen masters would call enlightenment: simply the ability to see what's right there in front of you without having to sift through a lot of thoughts and theories and, yes, expensive fishing tackle. ~ John Gierach

A brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said, "Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children's alone," and she took wing and went off to see about it
which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity more than once. ~ Mark Twain

The reason people think I look good now is because I was never a beauty as a wee girl. And thank heavens. It's frightening to get old anyway, but if your looks were the cornerstone of your life, well, it would be very difficult. ~ Lulu

The lovely thing about being forty is that you can appreciate twenty-five-year-old men more. ~ Colleen McCullough

I've never sailed the Amazon,
I've never reached Brazil;
But the Don and Magdalena,
They can go there when they will!
Yes, weekly from Southampton,
Great steamers, white and gold,
Go rolling down to Rio
(Roll down - roll down to Rio!)
And I'd like to roll to Rio
Some day before I'm old!
I've never seen a Jaguar,
Nor yet an Armadill
O dilloing in his armour,
And I s'pose I never will,
Unless I go to Rio
These wonders to behold
Roll down - roll down to Rio
Roll really down to Rio!
Oh, I'd love to roll to Rio
Some day before I'm old! ~ Rudyard Kipling

I'm twice as old, but I feel good. ~ James Brown

DAVE: john
DAVE: dude i gotta say
DAVE: when you talk about being or not being "a homosexual" you kinda sound like a corny old man
JOHN: what! why?
JOHN: no, that's a normal way of putting it!
JOHN: i mean... it's a pretty normal thing to say, right? when that's... how... you are?
KARKAT: SOMEBODY FUCKING KILL ME.
DAVE: what does normal mean though
DAVE: normal was some crap that ruled our dead civilization
DAVE: we left that behind years ago
DAVE: its all a huge pile of shit that doesnt matter anymore ~ Andrew Hussie

Over mochi ice cream, Grandma tells us about all the places she wants to take us in Korea: the Buddhist temples, the outdoor food markets, the skin clinic where she goes to get her moles lasered off. She points at a tiny mole on Kitty's cheek and says, "We'll get that taken care of."
Daddy looks alarmed, and Trina's quick to ask, "Isn't she too young?"
Grandma waves her hand. "She'll be fine."
Then Kitty asks, "How old do you have to be to get a nose job in Korea?" and Daddy nearly chokes on his beer.
Grandma gives her a threatening look. "You can never, ever change your nose. You have a lucky nose."
Kitty touches it gingerly. "I do?"
"Very lucky," Grandma says. "If you change your nose, you'll change your luck. So never do it."
I touch my own nose. Grandma's never said anything about my nose being lucky. ~ Jenny Han

We can't allow our leaders to play the old 'do as I say, not as I do' game. ~ Mike Medavoy

Trade is 10 times as old as farming. ~ Matt Ridley

...I see fetal sciences in you,
mummified poems, and bones
of my romantic secrets
and old innocence.

Shall I hang you on the wall
of my emotional museum,
beside the dark, chill,
sleeping irises of my evil?

Or shall I spread you over the pines
―suffering book of my love―
so you can learn about the song
the nightingale offers the dawn?... ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

My fan base is really, really young. They're the youngest demographic that you can track on YouTube: 13- to 17-year-old females. But the fan mail that I get in my P.O. box, they're all from moms and from kids who are two years old, three years old, four years old. ~ Rosanna Pansino

It hurt so much when I lost my mother, I know how it feels.' Hilary told a friend whose mother had recently passed away. 'I will never get over it.' In a 2015 interview with ABC News, Hillary got emotional when she mentioned her mother, Dorothy Rodham, who died in 2011. Dorothy grew up in poverty and at eight years old she was sent from Chicago to California to live with her grandparents after her parents divorced. 'She told me every day you've got to get up and fight for what you believe in, no matter how hard it is. I think about her a lot, I miss her a lot. I wish she were her with me. ~ Kate Andersen Brower

We don't like to admit it, but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything. All truly civilized people – the ancients no less than us – have civilized themselves through the wilful repression of the old, animal self. ~ Donna Tartt

Robin Goodfellow is a very old faerie. Not only that, he has ballads, poems, and stories written about him, so he is very near immortal, as long as humans remember them. Not to say he is immune to iron and technology-far from it. Puck is strong, but even he cannot resist the effects. ~ Julie Kagawa

Work, my boy! forget me for a few years; I'd only give you bad advice; don't mention our meeting to your uncle- it might do you harm; don't think about an old man who would be dead long since, were it not for his dear habit of coming here every day and finding his old friends on these shelves. ~ Jules Verne

singing the songs of the old masters. Fats Waller's 'Ain't That A Shame', Chuck Berry's ~ Chris Dolan

We took Beowulf, the epic poem in Old English, and put it right together with John Gardner's contemporary retelling. If you bring it into today, we really feel that it has something very fresh to say now. ~ Julie Taymor

What in the world happened?" Phil asked me. "Did you flip your truck?"
"It's a long story," I said. "Let's go duck-hunting."
We ended up having one of our best duck hunts of the season. When we returned to Phil's house, I filled up about twenty bottles of water. My busted radiator leaked the entire way home, and I had to stop every couple of miles to fill it up with water. There was a body shop close to our house, so I pulled in there before going home.
"Well, whatcha think?" I asked the mechanic.
"Well, we can fix it," he said. "I can get you a radiator."
"What's it going to cost me?" I asked.
"Well, what are you going to do with the deer?" he said. "I can get you a radiator for the deer."
About that time, the mechanic's assistant walked up to my truck.
"What are you going to do with the rack of horns?" the assistant asked me.
"Hey, if you can fix my door so it will close, you can have the horns," I told him.
There's nothing quite like good, old-fashioned redneck bartering. Unfortunately, I didn't get off so easy with the damage to Missy's car. In all the excitement of the day, I'd completely forgotten to tell her that I'd wrecked her car. When I got home, she told me somebody pulled in the driveway and sideswiped it. I couldn't tell a lie.
"You remember how you scolded me about forgetting to turn out the carport light?" I said.
"Yeah," she said.
"Well, this is what happens when you start worrying about sma ~ Jase Robertson

My job now, as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, is to take this process forward, and that I'm determined to do, whatever old clippings you dig out and whatever old quotes you put before me. ~ Peter Hain

We'd die here, old together, safe with each other's secrets. We were each other's juvenilia ~ Allan Gurganus

No society has succeeded in abolishing the distinction between ruler and ruled ... to be a ruler gives one special status and, usually, special privileges. During the Communist era, important officials in the Soviet Union had access to special shops selling delicacies unavailable to ordinary citizens; before China allowed capitalist enterprises in its economy, travelling by car was a luxury limited to tourists and those high in the party hierarchy Throughout the 'communist' nations, the abolition of the old ruling class was followed by the rise of a new class of party bosses and well-placed bureaucrats, whose behaviour and life-style came more and more to resemble that of their much-denounced predecessors. In the end, nobody believed in the system any more. That, couple with its inability to match the productivity of the less bureaucratically controlled, more egoistically driven capitalist economies, led to its downfall. ~ Peter Singer

Old people were forever telling her that they had been young once, but it was always hard for her to imagine. Especially when it seemed that they had forgotten what it was really like to be young. They usually spoke in terms of carefree swanning about without obligations, seeming to forget all the rules, the confusion, and the sheer frustration of trying to make sense of adults. ~ Nils Nisse Visser

Some young Hollywood starlets remind me of my grandmother's old farmhouse
all painted up nice on the front side, a big swing on the backside, and nothing whatsoever in the attic. ~ Bette Davis

If Moses is our lawgiver [Old Testament prophet given laws by God] at this time let us obey him, not in part only, but wholly, and put every Sabbath breaker, blasphemer, and adulterer to death. ~ Gerald Heaney

You could expect many things of God at night when the campfire burned before the tents. You could look through and beyond the veils of scarlet and see shadows of the world as God first made it and hear the voices of the beasts He put there. It was a world as old as Time, but as new as Creation's hour had left it.
In a sense it was formless. When the low stars shone over it and the moon clothed it in silver fog, it was the way the firmament must have been when the waters had gone and the night of the Fifth Day had fallen on creatures still bewildered by the wonder of their being. It was an empty world because no man had yet joined sticks to make a house or scratched the earth to make a road or embedded the transient symbols of his artifice in the clean horizon. But it was not a sterile world. It held the genesis of life and lay deep and anticipant under the sky. ~ Beryl Markham

When I was young, I despised old people. I was provincial and narrow-minded. It's the reason I stayed stupid so long. If you only get involved with young people you don't learn anything about the world. ~ Edmund White

We're just like the antiques. We grow old and get scarred and beat up along the way, and the only question becomes whether we're going to make it until we realize what we already have is valuable." --Faith Bass Darling's Last Garage Sale ~ Lynda Rutledge

Ghostly, in his mind, Ben heard the librarian reading to the little ones: Who is that trip-trapping upon my bridge? The children lean forward, all the old fascination glistening in their eyes: will the monster be bested ... or will It feed? ~ Stephen King