White Hair Quotes

As the years go on, you see changes in yourself, but you've got to face that - everyone goes through it ... Either you have to face up to it and tell yourself you're not going to be eighteen all your life, or be prepared for a terrible shock when you see the wrinkles and white hair. Getting older doesn't frighten me, but I wish I didn't have to because I like life a lot. ~ Audrey Hepburn

A woman once of some height, she is bent small, and the lingering strands of black look dirty in her white hair. She carries a cane, but in forgetfulness, perhaps, hangs it over her forearm and totters along with it dangling loose like an outlandish bracelet. Her method of gripping her gardener is this: he crooks his right arm, pointing his elbow toward her shoulder, and she shakily brings her left forearm up within his and bears down heavily on his wrist with her lumpish freckled fingers. Her hold is like that of a vine to a wall; one good pull will destroy it, but otherwise it will survive all weathers. ~ John Updike

Here: an exercise in choice. Your choice. One of these tales is true.
She lived through the war. In 1959 she came to America. She now lives in a condo in Miami, a tiny French woman with white hair, with a daughter and a grand-daughter. She keeps herself to herself and smiles rarely, as if the weight of memory keeps her from finding joy.
Or that's a lie. Actually the Gestapo picked her up during a border crossing in 1943, and they left her in a meadow. First she dug her own grave, then a single bullet to the back of the skull.
Her last thought, before that bullet, was that she was four months' pregnant, and that if we do not fight to create a future there will be no future for any of us.
There is an old woman in Miami who wakes, confused, from a dream of the wind blowing the wildflowers in a meadow.
There are bones untouched beneath the warm French earth which dream of a daughter's wedding. Good wine is drunk. The only tears shed are happy ones. ~ Neil Gaiman

For the first time since hearing about the Treaty of Versailles in detail, Mondaugen found himself crying. They'll drain his juices, he thought; caress his bones with their paw-pads, gag on his fine white hair. ~ Anonymous

The foolishness of the politicians of that era brought on the "First World War" But it was the people that had to fight it. The trenches that the soldiers dug and the craters from the artillery are still visible to visitors. The cemeteries where the fallen are buried, show that the majority were just young men, whereas the politicians, who were to blame, had mostly white hair and did little or no fighting! To secure our future we must read and learn from history! ~ Hank Bracker

Now she mocked and berated herself fiercely. She was mad. She, a woman of twenty, had behaved like a little twelve-year-old child. 'But I'm not a woman,' she thought. 'There are people who are ageless, and I'm one of them. I was an old woman at twelve, and even when I have white hair I'll be exactly the same in my heart as I am today. Why be ashamed of it? ~ Irene Nemirovsky

Kent. Where's the king? Gent. Contending with the fretful elements; Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea, Or swell the curled waters 'bove the main, That things might change or cease; tears his white hair, Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage, Catch in their fury and make nothing of; Strives in his little world of man to outscorn The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain. This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch, The lion and the belly-pinched wolf Keep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs, And bids what will take all. ~ William Shakespeare

Shion sat down in front of the heater. His white hair, leaning more on transparent, was tinged red with the colours of the flame. His youthful hair had lost its colour, but still retained its shine. "It's beautiful" Nezumi thought. ~ Atsuko Asano

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. ~ George Orwell

I have the window seat. In the two seats beside me are two old ladies, old women, each with a knitted cardigan, each with yellowy-white hair and thick-lensed glasses with a chain for around the neck, each with a desiccated mouth lipsticked bright red with bravado... They seem to me amazingly carefree. They have saved up for this trip and they are damn well going to enjoy it, despite the arthritis of one, the swollen legs of the other. They're rambunctious, they're full of beans; they're tough as thirteen, they're innocent and dirty, they don't give a hoot. Responsibilities have fallen away from them, obligations, old hates and grievances; now for a short while they can play again like children, but this time without the pain. ~ Margaret Atwood

Down the Woodstock Road towards them an elderly, abnormally thin man was pedalling, his thin white hair streaming in the wind and sheer desperation in his eyes. Immediately behind him, running for their lives, came Scylla and Charybdis; behind them, a milling, shouting rout of undergraduates, with Mr Adrian Barnaby (on a bicycle) well in the van; behind them, the junior proctor, the University Marshal, and two bullers, packed into a small Austin car and looking very elect, severe and ineffectual; and last of all, faint but pursuing, lumbered the ungainly form of Mr Hoskins. ~ Edmund Crispin

A striking man stood in the doorway behind him: perhaps sixty-five, with a great shock of white hair. The hair was the only thing that looked at all old about him; he was close to six and a half feet tall, with a craggy, handsome face bronzed by the sun, a trim, athletic bearing, wearing a blue blazer over a crisp white cotton shirt and tan slacks. He radiated good health and vigorous living. His hands were massive. ~ Douglas Preston

There was a silence and then Alice, the oldest person in the room, cleared her throat. Alice has watery eyes and fluffy white hair and favors sweatpants and sweatshirts with glittery stars and flowers. Alice lost her mother when she was ten. That is a whole lifetime without a mother, to get used to not having a mother, and yet here she is. All these years later. Still grieving.

Alice said, "Write me a letter telling me how to live for the rest of my life without you." She paused.

"That was sixty-four years ago, and I still would like to know."

I'm writing this down because someday I will be Alice, with a whole lifetime spent without a mother, a lifetime of walking around with a Grand Canyon of grief in my heart, and people should know what that feels like. ~ Kathleen Glasgow

I think about pasta in the shape of Hello Kitty, stockings with diamond seams up the back, Marilyn's crumbling cake-mascara, and Liz Taylor's new white hair. I haven't got time for the trivials. ~ Emma Forrest

Reera did not keep them in misery more than a few seconds, for she touched each one with her right hand and instantly the fishes were transformed into three tall and slender young women, with fine, intelligent faces and clothed in handsome, clinging gowns. The one who had been a goldfish had beautiful golden hair and blue eyes and was exceedingly fair of skin; the one who had been a bronzefish had dark brown hair and clear gray eyes and her complexion matched these lovely features. The one who had been a silverfish had snow-white hair of the finest texture and deep brown eyes. The hair contrasted exquisitely with her pink cheeks and ruby-red lips, nor did it make her look a day older than her two companions. ~ L. Frank Baum

Even here, in the U.S., I walk my daughter's dog and I look for interesting people sitting at a picnic table and I walk over with my white hair and I ask, "Would you mind if I sat and rested here for a minute?" Nobody would refuse that. ~ Rita Gelman

She was at least seventy, tall, withered, and angular, with white hair arranged in old-fashioned sausage curls on her temples. She was dressed in the quaint and clumsy style of the wandering Englishwoman, like a person to whom clothes were a matter of complete indifference; she was eating an omelette and drinking water. ~ Guy De Maupassant

Instead she looked very hard at the woman's chin. On it was a single white hair - visible even in the heavy dusk - that closely resembled a piece of thread hanging off a scrap of fabric.

The woman forgot about Rusty for a moment. "I call her Hephzibah," she said with pride. "It's taken years for her to grow. ~ Ness Kingsley

It took us a lot of man hours to get that bloody white hair out, so it's good to get rid of it. ~ Tom Felton

The morning sun on her white hair and pale face made her seem almost translucent. She'd been a beautiful woman in her day, with wide eyes, high cheekbones, and a long, thin nose. Sometimes you could still catch sight of that beauty, and it was like looking through enchanted glass. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

And yet, or just for this reason, it's so fascinating to be a woman. It's an adventure that takes such courage, a challenge that's never boring. You'll have so many things to engage you if you're born a woman. To begin with, you'll have to struggle to maintain that if God exists he might even be an old woman with white hair or a beautiful girl. Then you'll have to struggle to explain that it wasn't sin that was born on the day when Eve picked an apple, what was born that day was a splendid virtue called disobedience. ~ Oriana Fallaci

Between the years of ninety-two and a hundred and two, however, we shall be the ribald, useless, drunken, outcast person we have always wished to be. We shall have a long white beard and long white hair; we shall not walk at all, but recline in a wheel chair and bellow for alcoholic beverages; in the winter we shall sit before the fire with our feet in a bucket of hot water, a decanter of corn whiskey near at hand, and write ribald songs against organized society ... We look forward to a disreputable, vigorous, unhonoured, and disorderly old age. ~ Don Marquis

It was turning out to be an anxious Christmas season. Too many were the early mornings spent sitting at the table, insomniac in the gray dawn, thinking to myself, Eggs would be good. Not for eating but for the viscous wrath of my ovobarrage. It seemed only a matter of time before I was lobbing my edible artillery out the window at the army of malefactors who daily made my life such a buzzing carnival of annoyance. I could almost feel the satisfying, sloshy heft of my weapons as I imagined them leaving my hands and raining down upon my targets: the pair of schnauzers two doors down, with their loathsome, skittish dispositions, barking and yelping all day long; their owner, with her white hair styled like Marlene Dietrich's in Blond Venus, who allows them to pee freely on the garbage that some poor sanitation worker then has to pick up; the leather-clad schmuck immediately next door, a cigar-smoking casual life-ruiner with his mufflerless motorcycle. All would taste my All Natural, Vegetarian Feed, Grade A Extra Large brand of justice! ~ David Rakoff

Girls, be good to these spirits of music and poetry
that breast your threshold with their scented gifts.
Lift the lyre, clear and sweet, they leave with you.
As for me, this body is now so arthritic
I cannot play, hardly even hold the instrument.
Can you believe my white hair was once black?
And oh, the soul grows heavy with the body.
Complaining knee-joints creak at every move.
To think I danced as delicate as a deer!
Some gloomy poems came from these thoughts:
useless: we are all born to lose life,
and what is worse, girls, to lose youth.
The legend of the goddess of the dawn
I'm sure you know: how rosy Eos
madly in love with gorgeous young Tithonus
swept him like booty to her hiding-place
but then forgot he would grow old and grey
while she in despair pursued her immortal way. ~ Sappho

So, lively brisk old fellow, don't let age get you down. White hairs or not, you can still be a lover. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A man with dry, graying skin and a mop of white hair came in with a plastic tray of herbal potions for sale. "No, no, no," Aisha said to him, palm raised as though to ward him off. The man retreated. Ifemelu felt sorry for him, hungry-looking in his worn dashiki, and wondered how much he could possibly make from his sales. She should have bought something. "You talk Igbo to Chijioke. He listen to you," Aisha said. "You talk Igbo?" "Of course I speak Igbo," Ifemelu said, defensive, wondering if Aisha was again suggesting that America had changed her. "Take it easy!" she added, because Aisha had pulled a tiny-toothed comb through a section of her hair. "Your hair hard," Aisha said. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The God you imagine looks like Father Brennan, the man who baptized you: tall and Irish, with white hair and kind blue eyes, shooting a basketball in black vestments on the parish playground. The Virgin is one of the nuns who ran the adjoining schoolhouse: a spinster with a downy chin, her veil a habit. Old and sacred words, they taught you. You would not invent your own any more than you would try to build your own cathedral. Bead by bead, you whisper the same words Saint Peter spoke in Rome, the same words spoken today by all believers in São Paulo and Boston and Limerick and Cebu. ~ Mia Alvar

As his boots walked towards the old station, he felt as though he were hallucinating. Scary apprehension increased the beat of his heart and the sweat upon his forehead was cold. The reality of where he stood created a sinking feeling inside of him.
An old man everyone called Uncle Tucker once owned this place. His sole existence behind the counter all of the time, day and night. He could have been a creature out of a fairy tale, with his long white beard and equally long white hair. Merlin. The overalls and the ball cap perched upon his head, along with the half-smoked cigar with an endless burning orb positioned in his mouth. It made him a fixture in time. He wondered if Tucker would still be alive. Tucker with his endless stories of the 1960s, the Vietnam War, and flower children. A man that never left a country thousands of miles away where bicycles filled the capital. A man who never left those fields where killing occurred. ~ Jaime Allison Parker

In the legends that males have invented to explain life, the first human creature is a man named Adam. Eve arrives later, to give him pleasure and cause trouble. In the paintings that adorn churches, God is an old man with a beard, never an old woman with white hair. And all the heroes are males: from Prometheus who discovered fire to Icarus who tried to fly, on down to Jesus whom they call the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit, almost as though the woman giving birth to him were an incubator or a wetnurse. ~ Oriana Fallaci

Tarquin turned from the table, just as the tent flaps parted for a pair of broad shoulders -

Varian. He didn't so much as look at his High Lord, his focus going right to where Amren sat at the head of the table. As if he'd sensed she was here - or someone had reported. And he'd come running.

Amren's eyes flicked up from the Book as Varian halted. A coy smile curved her red lips.

There was still blood and dirt splattered on Varian's brown skin, coating his silver armor and close-cropped white hair. He didn't seem to notice or care as he strode for Amren.

And none of us dared to speak as Varian dropped to his knees before Amren's chair, took her shocked face in his broad hands, and kissed her soundly.
...
None of us lasted long after dinner.

Amren and Varian didn't even bother to join us.

No, she'd just wrapped her legs around his waist, right there in front of us, and he'd stood, lifting her in one swift movement. I wasn't entirely sure how Varian managed to walk them out of the tent while still kissing her, Amren's hands dragging through his hair, letting out noises that were unnervingly like purring as they vanished into the camp.

Rhys had let out a low laugh as we all gawked in their wake. "I suppose that's how Varian decided he'd tell Amren he was feeling rather grateful she ordered us to go to Adriata."

Tarquin cringed. "We'll alternate who has to deal with them on holidays. ~ Sarah J. Maas

I have white hair now, but a lot of it, and I'm still very glamorous, and so I won't disappoint, I hope! I'll still be wearing the tight leather trousers and high-heel boots, regardless of what age! ~ Kate O'Mara

It was like the face of some ancient archangel, judging justly after heroic wars. There was laughter in the eyes, and in the mouth honour and sorrow. There was the same white hair, the same great, grey-clad shoulders that I had seen from behind. But when I saw him from behind I was certain he was an animal, and when I saw him in front I knew he was a god. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I tried eHarmony, because I liked the white hair and glasses of that guy on the commercials, and his manner was gentle, but eHarmony told me that the system and it's twenty nine levels of compatibility couldn't find anyone for me.
That hurt my feelings. ~ Craig Lancaster

My mother's white, and she didn't know how to do my hair, so I had something that I always call white-mama hair. ~ Jami Floyd

The bristling eyebrows shot up in mock surprise. Mesmerized, the boy watched them disappear under the hanging thatch of white hair. There, almost coyly, they remained just out of sight for a moment, before suddenly descending with a terrible finality and weight. ~ Jonathan Stroud

How could this word be a party of May's vocabulary if neither one ever taught her? Just like that, she has deepened. Beneath her blond-white hair are these two new eyes that see what he can't guess. She is capable of withholding, then revealing. How has she learned to be this new thing that she is? He cups his hand to the back of her head, and holds her close, feeling already that all of it will pass too soon, that she is already becoming her own self, composed of secret knowledge. ~ Emily Ruskovich

I grasped the mirror to look closer at the strange girl in the reflection. Yes, I could see some similarities. The shape of the face was the same, but with all the changes it looked unearthly. The reflection was beautiful ... extremely beautiful
small, pink lips ... pale and glowing skin ... fine white hair. But I couldn't stop focusing on the eyes. The bottomless blue was shocking in the midst of white. She could have competed against Lydia. No, she would have blown Lydia out of the water. ~ M.L. LeGette

Every day, soon after lunch, at a time when most people stayed indoors, enjoying a siesta, a dapper little old man stepped out on the balcony on the other side of the street. He had a soldierly bearing, very erect, and affected a military style of dressing; his snow-white hair was always brushed to perfect smoothness. Leaning over the balcony he would call: ~ Albert Camus

The door flew open, revealing a wrinkled, forward-thrusting face wreathed with a nimbus of wispy white hair, a face resembling nothing so much as a mole emerging from its burrow. Her spectacles were so dirty that I could hardly see the use of them. She peered at us as if at two scabrous street dogs and tightened her grasp on her cane.
"What do you want? I don't let rooms, and if you've business with my sons or my husband, they work for a living. ~ Lyndsay Faye

That she is beautiful, an impossible kind of beauty, composed of all the wrong elements: white hair, the flawless but deeply lined skin, the freckles of age dotting the hands and face. ~ Sue Miller

Nevertheless, it was not necessary to assume, as Wolfe had in the case of Viola Duday, that if he had killed Priscilla Eads he had probably done so by contrivance and not by perpetration. In spite of his pure white hair and wrinkled old skin, I would have bet, from the way he looked and moved and held his shoulders and head, that he could still have chinned himself up to five or six times. ~ Rex Stout

It is not white hair that engenders wisdom. ~ Menander

On pillow after pillow lies
The wild white hair and staring eyes;
Jaws stand open; necks are stretched
With every tendon sharply sketched;
A bearded mouth talks silently
To someone no one else can see.

Sixty years ago they smiled
At lover, husband, first-born child.

Smiles are for youth. For old age come
Death's terror and delirium.

- Heads in the Women's Ward ~ Philip Larkin

So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long. For suppose you should think that a man had had a long voyage who had been caught in a raging storm as he left harbour, and carried hither and thither and driven round and round in a circle by the rage opposing winds. He did not have a long voyage, just a long tossing about. ~ Seneca.

The old man with the white beard had gone quite mad. He ripped his robes from his body and ran naked through the forest glade. He was babbling and shouting at the sky. His words were nothing but meaningless sounds - guttural grunts and lunatic ravings. His eyes were wild and his white beard and white hair were tangled with twigs and leaves. He foamed and spit and waved his oaken staff around like a club. He tried to grab squirrels and eat them raw. He rolled around in the dirt and swallowed small stones. ~ Jennifer M. Baldwin

Turned back around before she could focus on him. It was at this moment that the black-robed Judge Christian Abernathy stepped into the courtroom. He was old, bespectacled, and frail, and his white hair, what was left of ~ David Baldacci

Rachel left," he says, sighing. "Says she's never coming back."
Galen nods. "She always says that. It's probably for the better tonight, though." They both wince as Rayna plants the ball of her foot in Emma's back, splaying her across the sea of shards.
"I taught her that," Toraf says.
"It's a good move."
Neither of the combatants seem to care about the rain, lightning, or the whereabouts of their hostess. The storm billows in, drenching the furniture, the TV, the strange art on the wall. No wonder Rachel didn't want to see this. She fussed over this stuff for days.
"So, it kind of threw me when she said she didn't like fish," Toraf says.
"I noticed. Surprised me, too, but everything else is there."
"Bad temper."
"The eyes."
"That white hair is shocking though, isn't it?"
"Yeah, I like it. Shut up." Galen throws a sideways glare at his friend, whose grin makes him ball his fists.
"Hard bones and thick skin, obviously. There's no sign of blood. And she took some pretty hard hits from Rayna," Toraf continues neutrally.
Galen nods, relaxes his fists.
"Plus, you feel the pull-" Toraf is greeted with a forceful shove that sends him skidding on one foot across the slippery marble floor. Laughing, he comes back to stand beside Galen again.
"Jackass," Galen mutters.
"Jackass? What's a jackass?"
"Not sure. Emma called me that today when she was irritated with me."
"You're insulting me in human-talk no ~ Anna Banks

She received fine silk gloves and music boxes and even a curled lock of prickly white hair tied with a red velvet ribbon. That particularly appalling gift had even come with a poem:

Roses are red, violets are blue,
I would even trim my mustache for you!

She had memorized the short stanza against her will and the words had nauseated her on multiple occasions since. ~ Marissa Meyer

Sometimes it amazed him. Lanky Thom with his white hair and mustaches, who had been a Queen's lover once, and more willingly than himself, not to mention more than a lover, if you believed half he said. Square-jawed Harnan with that tattoo on his cheek and more elsewhere, who had been a soldier all his life. Juilin with his bamboo staff and his sword-breaker on his hip, who thought himself as good as any lord even if the idea of carrying a sword himself still made him uneasy, and fat Vanin, who made Juilin look a bootlicker by comparison. Skinny Fergin, and Gorderan, nearly as wide in the shoulders as Perrin, and Metwyn, whose pale Cairhienin face still looked like a boy's despite being years older than Mat. Some of them followed Mat Cauthon because they thought he was lucky, because his luck might keep them alive when the swords were out, and some for reasons he was not really sure of, but they followed. Not even Thom had ever more than protested an order of his. Maybe Renaile had been more than luck. Maybe his being ta'veren did more than dump him in the-middle of trouble. Suddenly he felt... responsible... for these men. It was an uncomfortable feeling. Mat Cauthon and responsibility did not go together. It was unnatural. ~ Robert Jordan

And there was this sweet-looking little old lady with her white hair in a bun and everything, the typical grandmother type, and she was swearing her head off. I guess Alzheimer's had brought out her inner sailor. ~ Vivian Vande Velde

God was something I did not understand the way kids who went to church did. They said God was a man in the sky with white hair and a beard like Santa. This seemed strange to me. When I thought of God, I imagined only mist over the pond, a sliver of moon in a dark sky, scatterings of stars, birdsong. ~ Melissa Coleman

Out from behind the desk where he'd been sitting, hidden by the piles of books, appeared a bespectacled, green-eyed man in a green plaid suit. His thick white hair was shaggy and mussed, his nose was rather large and lumpy like a vegetable, and although it was clear he had recently shaved, he appeared to have done so without benefit of a mirror, for here and there upon his neck and chin were nicks from a razor, and occasional white whiskers that he'd missed altogether. This was Mr. Benedict. ~ Trenton Lee Stewart

Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer. ~ William Shakespeare

I have had more magazine covers in the last 25 years than I have had in my whole elongated career. Today I am in a territory that business considers unmarketable: age and white hair. Slowly, however, I started to own that territory little by little because I stood up for age. ~ Carmen Dell'Orefice

Presidia, you fool," Dee shouted at the nun, dragging the arrow backward with her high heel. Luce leaned down to pick it up and slipped it inside the satchel. "You know that won't hurt me! Now you've annoyed my friends." She gestured broadly at the angels darting forward to disarm the costumed Elders.
"Stand down, defector!" Presidia replied. "We require the girl! Surrender her and we will-"
But Presidia never finished. Arriane was at the Elder's back in a flash, brushing the veil from her head, taking her white hair in her fists.
"Because I respect my Elders," Arriane hissed through her clenched teeth, "I feel I must prevent them from embarrassing themselves." Then she lifted off the ground, still holding Presidia by the air. The Elder kicked the air as if pedaling an invisible bicycle. Arriane pivoted and slammed the old woman's body into the cornice of the church's façade with such force it left an indention when she collapsed in a twisted heap, hands and legs sticking out at grisly angles. ~ Lauren Kate

Heads in the Women's Ward
On pillow after pillow lies
The wild white hair and staring eyes;
Jaws stand open; necks are stretched
With every tendon sharply sketched;
A bearded mouth talks silently
To someone no one else can see.
Sixty years ago they smiled
At lover, husband, first-born child.
Smiles are for youth. For old age come
Death's terror and delirium. ~ Philip Larkin

[My grandfather] returned to what he called 'studying.' He sat looking down at his lap, his left hand idle on the chair arm, his right scratching his head, his white hair gleaming in the lamplight. I knew that when he was studying he was thinking, but I did not know what about. Now I have aged into knowledge of what he thought about. He thought of his strength and endurance when he was young, his merriment and joy, and how his life's burdens had then grown upon him. He thought of that arc of country that centered upon Port William as he first had known it in the years just after the Civil War, and as it had changed, and as it had become; and how all that time, which would have seemed almost forever when he was a boy, now seemed hardly anytime at all. He thought of the people he remembered, now dead, and of those who had come and gone before his knowledge, and of those who would come after, and of his own place in that long procession. ~ Wendell Berry

Jenna swallowed the lump in her throat. "Good evening, gentlemen."
"You'll be hard pressed to find a gentleman in this bunch," a forty-something guy with close-cropped white hair said, laughing.
She walked closer to the group and held out her hands in apology. "Sorry, didn't mean to offend. ~ Aria Kane

I have a friend who wanted to practise on my head because they wanted to be a stylist. So I offered what hair I had left to turn white. ~ James Michael Tyler

Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game is finished, that the stage belongs to the rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the body, but the indifference of the soul. ~ Andre Maurois

Most people do not have a problem with being old. They have a problem with looking old. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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

Because we don't know, do we? Everyone knows . . . How what happens the way it does? What underlies the anarchy of the train of events, the uncertainties, the mishaps, the disunity, the shocking irregularities that define human affairs? Nobody knows, Professor Roux. "Everyone knows" is the invocation of the cliche and the beginning of the banalization of experience, and it's the solemnity and the sense of authority that people have in voicing the cliché that's so insufferable. What we know is that, in an unclichéd way, nobody knows anything. You can't know anything. The things you know you don't know. Intention? Motive? Consequence? Meaning?

All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing.

As the audience filed back in, I began, cartoonishly, to envisage the fatal malady that, without anyone's recognizing it, was working away inside us, within each and every one of us: to visualize the blood vessels occluding under the baseball caps, the malignancies growing beneath the permed white hair, the organs misfiring, atrophying, shutting down, the hundreds of billions of murderous cells surreptitiously marching this entire audience toward the improbable disaster ahead. I couldn't stop myself. The stupendous decimation that is death sweeping us all away. Orchestra, audience, conductor, technicians, swallows, wrens - think of the numbers for Tanglewood alone just between now and the year 4000. Then multiply that times every ~ Philip Roth

When Goya was 80 he drew an ancient man propped on two sticks, with a great mass of white hair and beard all over his face, and the inscription, "I am still learning." ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The face that greeted me, however, was far from welcoming, it was a miniature stick insect of a woman with wiry white hair and enormous glasses that emphasized her heavily wrinkled face. She blinked twice and looked me up and down. By the look on her face, she wasn't that impressed with what she saw. "Who is it, Ethel?"
She responded, "It's some homeless woman. She looks like she needs money and a good wash."
And I thought I'd already reached the lowest point of my day. ~ Suzanne Kelman

In Chloe, a great city, the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter, they imagine a thousand things about one another; meetings which could take place between them, conversations, surprises, caresses, bites. But no one greets anyone; eyes lock for a second, then dart away, seeking other eyes, never stopping.

A girl comes along, twirling a parasol on her shoulder, and twirling slightly also her rounded hips. A woman in black comes along, showing her full age, her eyes restless beneath her veil, her lips trembling. At tattooed giant comes along; a young man with white hair; a female dwarf; two girls, twins, dressed in coral. Something runs among them, an exchange of glances link lines that connect one figure with another and draws arrows, stars, triangles, until all combinations are used up in a moment, and other characters come on to the scene: a blind man with a cheetah on a leash, a courtesan with an ostrich-plume fan, an ephebe, a Fat Woman. And thus, when some people happen to find themselves together, taking shelter from the rain under an arcade, or crowding beneath an awning of the bazaar, or stopping to listen to the band in the square, meetings, seductions, copulations, orgies are consummated among them without a word exchanged, without a finger touching anything, almost without an eye raised.

A voluptuous vibration constantly stirs Chloe, the most chaste of cities. If men and women began to live their ephemeral d ~ Italo Calvino

Kindness is the only charm permitted to the aged; it is the coquetry of white hairs. ~ Octave Feuillet

The Gestapo chief leaned forward. I'd like to send you home, old fellow," he said. "I'll take your word that you won't cause any more trouble."

I could not see father's face, only the erect carriage of his shoulders and the halo of white hair above them. But I heard his answer.

"If I go home today," he said evenly and clearly, "tomorrow I will open my door again to any man in need who knocks. ~ Corrie Ten Boom

I had a few pricks of conscience- seeing Henry's pajama bottoms hanging forlornly from a peg in our bedroom, his comb on he dresser, a stray white hair on his pillow- but real shame and regret were absent. In their place was a riotous sense of wonder. I'd never imagined myself capable of either great boldness or great passion, and the discovery that I had reservoirs of both astounded me. ~ Hillary Jordan

The Nigger was a handsome, austere woman with snow-white hair and a dark and awful dignity. Her brown eyes, brooding deep in her skull, looked out on an ugly world with philosophic sorrow. She conducted her house like a cathedral dedicated to a sad but erect Priapus. If you wanted a good laugh
and a poke in the ribs, you went to Jenny's and got your money's worth; but if the sweet worldsadness close to tears crept out of your immutable loneliness, the Long Green was your place. When you came out of there you felt that something pretty stern and important had happened. It was no jump in the hay. The dark beautiful eyes of the Nigger stayed with you for days. ~ John Steinbeck

It is true that in this time people set their faces hard for photographs, partly from custom, partly because of deficits in photographic technology, but this crowd might not have smiled for the better part of a century. The women seem suspended in a state somewhere between melancholy and fury and are surrounded by old men in strange beards that look as if someone had dabbed glue at random points on their faces, then hurled buckets of white hair in their direction. ~ Erik Larson

Conor's grandma wasn't like other grandmas. He'd met Lily's grandma loads of times, and she was how grandmas were supposed to be: crinkly and smiley, with white hair and the whole lot. She cooked meals where she made three separate eternally boiled vegetable portions for everybody and would giggle in the corner at Christmas with a small glass of sherry and a paper crown on her head.

Conor's grandma wore tailored trouser suits, dyed her hair to keep out the grey, and said things that made no sense at all, like "Sixty is the new fifty" or "Classic cars need the most expensive polish." What did that even mean? She emailed birthday cards, would argue with waiters over wine, and still had a job. Her house was even worse, filled with expensive old things you could never touch, like a clock she wouldn't even let the cleaning lady dust. Which was another thing. What kind of grandma had a cleaning lady? ~ Patrick Ness

She unwrapped the lamb chops from their white butcher paper and peeled a few potatoes and opened a can of peas. Her father came in with the newspaper under his arm and then swatted her on the hip with it as he went to the table to sit down. And then Jimmy came in still wearing his overcoat to say, "What's this? What's this?" And then told their father with his hands on his hips that George was taking "our miss here" out to dinner. And her father lowered the paper and smiled at her - his round, florid face and his sparse white hair which he no longer bothered to slick down with water or tonic, being mostly housebound and hardly out of his slippers all week long - and only began to pout a little, Jimmy too, when she set the plate of lamb chops and the mint jelly and the mashed potatoes and peas in their bowls on the table and then pulled off her apron and said, "I'm just going to take a shower." "Be sure to put it back," Jimmy said ~ Alice McDermott

The door was opening again. The seer does not like to dwell upon what he saw
entering the room: he says it might be described as a frog - the size of a man - but it had scanty white hair about its head. It was busy about the truckle-beds, but not for long. The sound of cries - faint, as if coming out of a vast distance - but, even so, infinitely appalling, reached the ear. ("The Haunted Doll's House") ~ M.R. James

Perhaps [he had] persevered for too long, in the face of too many obstacles, his hair proof of his tenacity - the stark black streaked with white or, in certain light, stark white shot through with black, each strand of white attributable to the jungle fever (so cold it burned, his skin glacial), each strand of black a testament to being alive afterwards. ~ Jeff VanderMeer

When the soldier returns from the wars, even though he has white hair, he very soon finds a young wife. But a woman has only one summer; if she does not make hay while the sun shines, no one will afterwards have anything to say to her, and she spends her days consulting oracles that never send her a husband. ~ Aristophanes

How ill white hairs become a fool and jester! ~ William Shakespeare

Although no one said so, intuitively I knew they were my celestial welcoming committee. It was as if they had all gathered just outside heaven's gate, waiting for me. The first person I recognized was Joe Kulbeth, my grandfather. He looked exactly as I remembered him, with his shock of white hair ... as I stared into his face, an ecstatic bliss overwhelmed me ... I couldn't get past the joy of our reunion. How either of us reached heaven seemed irrelevant. ~ Don Piper

There were cushioned benches on either side of the fire, and directly before it a great carved chair. Shevraeth rose from one of the benches, making a gesture of welcome. Indicating the chair, in which sat a straight-backed old man dressed in black velvet, he said, "Father, I have the honor of introducing Lady Meliara Astiar." And to me, in the suavest voice, as if I hadn't flung a candleholder at his head just a little while before, "Lady Meliara, my father, Prince Alaerec."
The old man nodded slowly and with great dignity. He had keen dark eyes, and white hair which he wore loose on his shoulders in the old-fashioned way. "My dear, please forgive me if I do not rise. I am afraid I do not get about with ease or grace anymore."
I felt an impulse to bow, and squashed it. I remembered that Court women sweep curtsys--something my mother had tried once to teach me, when I was six. I also remembered that I was there against my will--a prisoner, despite all the fine surroundings and polite talk--so I just crossed my arms and said, "Don't think you have to walk about on my behalf."
Bran gave me a slightly bemused look and bobbed an awkward bow to the old man.
A servant came forward, silent and skillful, and passed out goblets of wine. The Prince saluted me in silence, followed by Bran and Shevraeth. I looked down at my goblet, then took a big gulp that made my nose sting. ~ Sherwood Smith

The librarian is a caricature of librarian - short white hair, horn-rimmed glasses, a bosom you could hide Christmas presents under and a New England-tight-ass face that looks like she hasn's taken a shit since her family came over on the Mayflower. ~ Bart Yates

Trembling, she rose to her feet, shuffled a few cautious steps closer, and stared down at him. Snow-white hair, as soft-looking as the fox's fur, brushed across his forehead in a tousled mess - and poking out of his hair was a pair of white fox ears. His body was otherwise human, but he'd kept the ears. ~ Annette Marie

A woman of about sixty answered the door. She had blue-white hair and a look on her face you don't see too often any more, the look of a woman who hasn't been disappointed: 'Yes, ~ Ross Macdonald

I reach for the napkin, and as I do I catch sight of my hands. They are knobby and crooked, thin-skinned, and - like my ruined face - covered with liver spots.
My face. I push the porridge aside and open my vanity mirror. I should know better by now, but somehow I still expect to see myself. Instead, I find an Appalachian apple doll, withered and spotty, with dewlaps and bags and long floppy ears. A few strands of white hair spring absurdly from its spotted skull.
I try to brush the hairs flat with my hand and freeze at the sight of my old hand on my old head. I lean close and open my eyes very wide, trying to see beyond the sagging flesh.
It's no good. Even when I look straight into the milky blue eyes, I can't find myself anymore. When did I stop being me? ~ Sara Gruen

Sophie got herself to the mirror, and found that she had to hobble. The face in the mirror was quite calm, because it was what she expected to see. It was the face of a gaunt old woman, withered and brownish, surrounded by wispy white hair. Her own eyes, yellow and watery, stared out at her, looking rather tragic.
"Don't worry, old thing," Sophie said to the face. "You look quite healthy. Besides, this is much more like you really are. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

She remained on the steps, waiting for Papa, watching the stray ash and the corpse of collected books. Everything was sad. Orange and red embers looked like rejected candy, and most of the crowd had vanished. She'd seen Frau Diller leave (very satisfied) and Pfiffikus (white hair, a Nazi uniform, the same dilapidated shoes, and a triumphant whistle). Now there was nothing but cleaning up, and soon, no one would ever imagine it had happened.
But you could smell it. ~ Markus Zusak

I'm afraid to look in the mirror. I'm afraid I'm going to see an old lady with white hair, just like the old ladies in the park. Alittle bundle in a black shawl just waiting for the coffin. ~ Paddy Chayefsky

Minutes, hours, days, months, and years,
Pass'd over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
Ah, what a life were this! ~ William Shakespeare

Your hair is so white now it can talk back to the police. ~ Cecily Strong

If you lose your temper, your sound sleep will go, and you will have to use a tranquilizer or sleeping pills? Then gradually, more white hair, wrinkles. ~ Dalai Lama

Even drawing gray hair at all is difficult to render in black and white. ~ Alison Bechdel

The real reason why most old people hate their wrinkles and white hair is because they are still far from being wise. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Look at the four-spaced year
That imitates four seasons of our lives;
First Spring, that delicate season, bright with flowers,
Quickening, yet shy, and like a milk-fed child,
Its way unsteady while the countryman
Delights in promise of another year.
Green meadows wake to bloom, frail shoots and grasses,
And then Spring turns to Summer's hardiness,
The boy to manhood. There's no time of year
Of greater richness, warmth, and love of living,
New strength untried. And after Summer, Autumn,
First flushes gone, the temperate season here
Midway between quick youth and growing age,
And grey hair glinting when the head turns toward us,
Then senile Winter, bald or with white hair,
Terror in palsy as he walks alone. ~ Ovid

The incongruous combination of white hair, beard, and powerful arms usually caused boys to scatter with the muddled impression that Father Christmas was angry with them. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

If there is a large voter turnout, not only do we retain the White House, but I think we regain the Senate. We win governors' chairs up and down the line. So I believe if you want to retain the White House, if you want to see Democrats do well across the board, I think our campaign is the one that creates the large voter turnout and helps us win. ~ Bernie Sanders

The so-called Philosophy of India is even more blowsy and senseless than the metaphysics of the West. It is at war with everything we know of the workings of the human mind, and with every sound idea formulated by mankind. If it prevailed in the whole modern world we'd still be in the Thirteenth Century; nay, we'd be back among the Egyptians of the pyramid age. Its only coherent contribution to Western thought has been theosophy-and theosophy is as idiotic as Christian Science. It has absolutely nothing to offer a civilized white man. ~ H.L. Mencken

It was the unicorn all right, and it was dead. Harry had never seen anything so beautiful and sad. Its long, slender legs were stuck out at odd angles where it had fallen and its mane was spread pearly-white on the dark leaves.
Harry had taken one step toward it when a slithering sound made him freeze where he stood. A bush on the edge of the clearing quivered ... Then, out of the shadows, a hooded figure came crawling across the ground like some stalking beast. Harry, Malfoy, and Fang stood transfixed. The cloaked figure reached the unicorn, lowered its head over the wound in the animal's side, and began to drink its blood. ~ J.K. Rowling

One of the seeds has split its shell and reaches a white hand upward. An apple tree growing from an apple seed growing in an apple. I show the little plantseed to Ms. Keen. She gives me extra credit. David rolls his eyes. Biology is so cool. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Steve always had a flair for the dramatic. He should have raised one ghostly fist in the air as he said it; though,for the full effect. ~ Kiersten White

It is particularly important for white Americans to approach this subject matter with the right goals in mind. Our goal must be sight, transformation, renewed consciousness. ~ Daniel Hill

White people set goals, rappers 'chase paper', and the Chinese are too busy doing both to talk about either one. ~ Dov Davidoff