Starting at about, I guess, forever, I’ve always looked forward to getting older. When I was 14, I couldn’t wait to be 16 and get a driver’s license.

How young can you die of old age?

Dressing up is a bore. At a certain age, you decorate yourself to attract the opposite sex, and at a certain age, I did that. But I’m past that age.

It is really very important while you are young to live in an environment in which there is no fear. Most of us, as we grow older, become frightened; we are afraid of living, afraid of losing a job, afraid of tradition, afraid of what the neighbours, or what the wife or husband would say, afraid of death.

Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.

Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.

The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.

I must have been one of the least surprised people on earth on September 11. I felt very braced for that. I knew something like that was going to come.

Nobody likes to have trouble. The moment we get a hint that it’s coming, a common response is, ‚Oh no! Not again!‘

I just don’t have time to get old!

Well, I’m in my 60s now. I finally look it, I think. People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.

What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.

I was always very curious as a young man about why older writers who I met seemed so indifferent to what was going on, whereas I, in my 20s, was reading everything. Everything seemed important. But they were only interested in the writers they admired when they were young, and I didn’t understand it then, but now, now I understand it.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

I was an only child, and Mother was always right with me all my life. I used to get very angry at her when I was growing up-it’s a natural thing.

I do a little thing about the way people shake the sweetener packet. You know, like they’re all excited. I want to get all the granules down to one end. I love all these rituals.

Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.

I guess maybe when you get past 70, other people start asking you how you feel.

When you are young, you cannot imagine being disabled. You imagine you would conquer it somehow. As I’ve got older, I can imagine it; I can see how life narrows in. I feel compassion for my mother now.

As you get older, you have more responsibilities; you have more commitments, more events, kids, you’re married now. You still have all the things that you’ve had, plus you just keep adding.

When I reached 80, my world turned upside down physically. I’ve had a lot of physical problems.

I’ll die a crazy old man!

Golf without bunkers and hazards would be tame and monotonous. So would life.

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

I saw MotoGP on TV first, before I saw F1 and other types of car racing. It’s what I got more into. It was cool, there was good, exciting racing.

I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.

I guess that’s one of the things about growing up in the fifties – it never occurred to me that you wouldn’t be at least as successful as your parents.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey’s end.

There is nothing better than getting shot at and missed. It’s really great.

I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement.

The deep, personal material of the latter half of your life is your children. You can write about your parents when they’re gone, but your children are still going to be here, and you’re going to want them to come and visit you in the nursing home.

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.

At my advanced age – I’m now an octogenarian – I’m constantly amazed by the number of people who want to take my picture.

I learned to walk as a baby, and I haven’t had a lesson since.

You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.

I think, when you are growing up, you have to pull apart from what your mother wants or needs. You’ve got to go your own way, and that’s what I did.

One knew in advance that life in New York would not be easy, but there were cheap rents in cold-water lofts without heat, and the excitement of being here made up for those hardships. I didn’t move to New York to make a fortune.

For me, when you are have people wondering what is next, what is coming out, you are on the right track.

I am growing handsome very fast indeed! I expect I shall be the belle of Amherst when I reach my 17th year. I don’t doubt that I shall have perfect crowds of admirers at that age. Then how I shall delight to make them await my bidding, and with what delight shall I witness their suspense while I make my final decision.

Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.

I get so excited when a song I wrote that’s very personal to me goes No. 1 and I look down and see people singing the words back to me.

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

I’m very excited about having the Internet in my den.

‚Unforgiven‘ is probably an example of a script that I liked right away but thought, ‚This is great, but I’d like to do this when I’m older.‘ So I stuck it in the drawer for ten years and then took it out.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

I’m saving that rocker for the day when I feel as old as I really am.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.

Most women in my family start to get sick and start dying in their 40s, and I am going to be very happy to become 50 and 60. I love getting older.

Mortality is very different when you’re 20 to when you’re 50.

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

My father will anticipate everything. He will leave you and me no chance to do a great and brilliant deed.

I just want to retire before I go senile because if I don’t retire before I go senile, then I’ll do more damage than good at that point.

As a soccer player, I wanted an FA Cup winner’s medal. As an actor you want an Oscar. As a chef it’s three-Michelin’s stars, there’s no greater than that. So pushing yourself to the extreme creates a lot of pressure and a lot of excitement, and more importantly, it shows on the plate.

Probably because I’m from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don’t get too excited with big things.

Death means change our clothes. Clothes become old, then time to come change. So this body become old, and then time come, take young body.

Often I sort of work up and down the manuscript. I sometimes used to go ahead of myself to see what was going to happen next, to make certain it fits what was going to be happening soon.

Where I grew up – I grew up on the north side of Akron, lived in the projects. So those scared and lonely nights – that’s every night. You hear a lot of police sirens, you hear a lot of gunfire. Things that you don’t want your kids to hear growing up.

Worry – a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair gray.