Quotes & Sayings About Fortieth Birthday

Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work. — Karl Jaspers

JACKSON'S DARK BROWN HAIR curled up on his shirt collar. Black lashes and heavy brows framed his blue eyes. A few crow's-feet around his eyes were the only sign that he'd just passed his fortieth birthday and they were minimized in the dim restaurant lights. His jeans were creased and stacked up over his highly polished black boots just the right way. Waitresses stopped what they were doing and gazed at him over their shoulders as he passed. Their — Carolyn Brown

When, sometime around my fortieth birthday, I was struck by the urge to try to write a novel, I was vastly comforted to learn that Rex Stout didn't write his first Nero Wolfe tale until he was forty-seven, and that he proceeded to write them right up to his death at the age of eighty-eight. It was considerably less comforting to learn that he typically completed a novel in thirty-eight days, and that he always got it right on the first try. P. G. Wodehouse once said, "Stout's supreme triumph was the creation of Archie Goodwin." That's how I've always felt about it, too. When I returned those first Rex Stout books to my librarian, I said to her, "Do you have any more of these Archie Goodwin stories?" She smiled, I recall, and said, "Why, yes. Dozens. — Rex Stout

This seemed an obvious sign from heaven. I should stop trying to write ... So the rejection on the fortieth birthday seemed an unmistakable command: Stop this foolishness and learn to make cherry pie. I covered up the typewriter in a great gesture of renunciation. Then I walked around and around the room, bawling my head off. I was totally, unutterably miserable. Suddenly I stopped, because I realized what my subconscious mind was doing while I was sobbing: my subconscious mind was busy working out a novel about failure. — Madeleine L'Engle

As I approach my fortieth birthday without having accomplished any one of the things I intended to accomplish - without ever having achieved the deep creativity that I have worked toward for all this time - I feel that I take a minor, an obscure, a dim position that is not my destiny but that is my fault, as if I had lacked, somewhere along the line, the wit and courage to contain myself competently within the shapes at hand. — John Cheever

On my fortieth birthday, rather than merely bore my friends by having anything as mundane as a midlife crisis I decided it might be more interesting to actually terrify them by going completely mad and declaring myself to be a magician. — Alan Moore

Well, I started conducting kind of by accident. I wanted to give myself a special birthday present for my fortieth birthday, and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I started attending some of the concerts and then simply dropping hints. — Bobby McFerrin