Old As You Feel Quotes & Sayings

Growing old is natural," growls the old woman. "When you've lived long enough for all your ambitions to be in ruins, friendships broken, lovers forgotten or divorced acrimoniously, what's left to go on for? If you feel tired and old in spirit, you might as well be tired and old in body. Anyway, wanting to live forever is immoral. Think of all the resources you're taking up that younger people need! Even uploads face a finite data storage limit after a time. It's a monstrously egotistical statement, to say you intend to live forever. And if there's one thing I believe in, it's public service. Duty: the obligation to make way for the new. Duty and control. — Charles Stross

Don't tell me anymore. You should have your dream, as the old woman told you to. I understand how you feel, but if you put those feelings into words they will turn into lies. (from Thailand) — Haruki Murakami

There will be days when you feel defeated, exhausted, and plain old beat-up by life's whiplash. People you love will disappoint you - and you will disappoint them. You'll probably struggle with some kind of mortal appetite. Some days it will feel as though the veil between Heaven and Earth is made of reinforced concrete. — Sheri L. Dew

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil. — Tim O'Brien

You know what my mother said to me when she came to say good-bye, as if to cheer me up, she says maybe District Twelve will finally have a winner. Then I realized she didn't mean me, she meant you!" bursts out Peeta.
"Oh, she meant you," I say with a wave of dismissal.
"She said, 'She's a survivor, that one.' She is," says Peeta.
That pulls me up short. Did his mother really say that about me? Did she rate me over her son? I see the pain in Peeta's eyes and know he isn't lying.
Suddenly I'm behind the bakery and I can feel the chill of the rain running down my back, the hollowness in my belly. I sound eleven years old when I speak. "But only because someone helped me. — Suzanne Collins

And even as she holds on to him, like she's drowning, she can feel the familiar anger returning, like an old song that you've heard so many times it's not even a song anymore, just a wasted pathway in your brain that you can never reclaim. — Jonathan Tropper

I walk at night under a moonless sky. Only the terrain guides my steps, yet my footfall is as sure as if a dozen suns lit the way. I go to meet you under a leafless tree that never seems to grow or alter its shape. I am uncertain if it still lives or has learned to disguise its death. The same thought crosses my mind when I feel your cold fingers take my hand. It is not the tree I reflect upon.

'Do you still love me?' The words tumble clumsily out of the dark.

Hesitation is its own answer, but I reply 'I'm here' anyway as if my words were whispered comfort and not a weathered blade. They are taken wrong.

'I love you too.'

Your arms wrap me up and clamp tightly around my waist. An old, familiar kiss hardens my lips. I wonder why it is I return to this place every year where only memories remain fond. Perhaps it is because I keep hoping this leafless tree will either change or die. — Richelle E. Goodrich

You have not slept for many days together, Legna. Why do you assume you might have success today?
Legna turned around sharply, driving her gaze and attention out the window, trying to use the sprawling lawn as a slate with which to fill her mind. Mind Demon he was not, but she knew he was capable of seeing far enough into her emotional state by just monitoring her physiological reactions to his observations. Legna bit her lip hard, furious that she should feel like the child he always referred to her as in their conversations. Young one, indeed. How would he like it if she referred to him as a decrepit old buzzard? — Jacquelyn Frank

You are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn't a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirted or avoided for years, they come cropping back up and stare you full in the face, and one aspect of depression is a deep knowledge that the comforting doctors who assure you that your judgment is bad are wrong. You are in touch with the real terribleness of your life. You can accept rationally that later, after the medication sets in, you will be better able to deal with the terribleness, but you will not be free of it. When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better. — Andrew Solomon

It may sound dorky, but I love books--the feel of the paper, the old, musty smell, and especially the way the words roll over you and take you somewhere altogether different. They've been my escape as long as I can remember. Whether I need a break from schoolwork or my brother or just life in general, there's always a books that can take me someplace far away. — Cheryl Renee Herbsman

I always feel bad for those who, in a sense, cede their authority to others, let others make major decisions about their life and actually believe them. When you're tiny, you have no choice. But as soon as your mind starts working, you pretty well figure it out. And you realize you're a hostage until you're old enough to leave. But as long as you have that goal - I will get out of here - you'll be OK. — Rita Mae Brown

I read a story about some old opera singer once, and when a guy asked her to marry him, she took him backstage after she had sung a real triumph, with all the people calling for her, asked, 'Do you think you could give me that?' That story hit me right, man. I know no guy ever made me feel as good as an audience. I'm really far into this now, really committed. Like, I don't think I'd go off the road for long now, for life with a guy no matter how good. Yeah, it's the truth. Scary thing to say though, isn't it? — Janis Joplin

I worry for you. If you love everyone, you'll end up having hurt feelings most of the time. I suppose, relative to the length of your life, you feel as if you've known me a rather long time. Your perspective of time is really very warped, Maya. But I am old and soon, you'll forget you even knew me. — Gabrielle Zevin

The difference with football is you're out on the pitch, you feel as though you can do something about it, or score a goal. But when that horse goes down to post as an owner you have no involvement whatsoever. It's a lonely old place in the stand. It's just down to man and beast. — Michael Owen

Dance, dance for me
Dance with the stars
Laugh, laugh for me
Wherever you are

Sing, sing out loud
Like angels do
Remember me
The way I'll remember you

Love, love for me
With all your soul
Cry, cry for me
As I grow old

See, see me from the edge of Heaven's eye
Feel for me 'cause feelings never die

I'll remember you
My very special friend
Until we meet again

(By Carrie Hamilton, Carol Burnett's daughter) — Carol Burnett

To simplify your life, just think of yourself as a four-year-old child. Try to imagine the way he thinks of reality. If you have to talk to someone about a so-called complicated matter, see how you can simplify it.
No matter with whom you are talking, feel that you are a child and that person is also a child. When a childlike quality comes into your life, everything automatically becomes simple. — Sri Chinmoy

This is one of my absolute favourite quotes its from the evernight series (stargazer)
charity to Balthazar
You remind me of too much. you remind me of what it felt like to be alive, to think of sunlight as something you could enjoy instead of something you could bare, to breath and have it change you, refresh you, awaken you, instead of just churning on and on some old useless habit that taunts you with what you use to be, to sigh and feel relief, to cry and let your sadness pass, instead of having it all bottled up inside of you forever and ever until you don't know who you are any more. — Claudia Gray

You can fix it as soon as you get up - you brush and use mouthwash - but there's something about knowing you woke up with hot-mothball mouth that makes you feel old. I think God designed our mouths to die first to help us slowly transition to the grave. — Tina Fey

But feelings, no matter how strong or "ugly," are not a part of who you are. They are the radio stations your mind listens to if you don't give it something better to do. Feelings are fluid and dynamic; they change frequently.
Feelings are something you HAVE, not something you ARE. Like physical beauty, a cold sore, or an opinion.
Admitting you feel rage or terrible pain or regret or some old, rotten blame does not mean these feelings are part of who you are as a person. What these feelings mean is, you have to change your thinking to be free of them. — Augusten Burroughs

To me, feeling good about yourself as you get older is all about your attitude - if you think you're old, you'll feel old. — Lulu

I realize thirty is just a number, that you're only as old as you feel and all that. I also realize that in the grand scheme of things, thirty is still young. But it's not that young. — Emily Giffin

At forty-five, I feel grateful almost daily to be the adult I wished I could be when I was seventeen. I work on my arm strength at the gym; I've become pretty good with tools. At the same time, almost daily, I lose battles with the seventeen-year-old who's still inside me. I eat half a box of Oreos for lunch, I binge on TV, I make sweeping moral judgments. I run around in torn jeans, I drink martinis on a Tuesday night, I stare at beer-commercial cleavage. I define as uncool any group to which I can't belong. I feel the urge to key Range Rovers and slash their tires; I pretend I'm never going to die.
You never stop waiting for the real story to start, because the only real story, in the end, is that you die. — Jonathan Franzen

A DESCRIPTION OF HAPPINESS IN KOBENHAVN
All this windless day snow fell
into the King's Garden
where I walked, perfecting and growing old,
abandoning one by one everybody:
randomly in love with the paradise
furnace of my mind. Now I sit in the dark,
dreaming of a marble sun
and its strictness. This
is to tell you I am not coming back.
To tell you instead of my private life
among people who must wrestle their hearts
in order to feel anything, as though it were
unnatural. What I master by day
still lapses in the night. But I go on
with the cargo cult, blindly feeling the snow
come down, learning to flower by tightening. — Jack Gilbert

In theory, I would like to lead a transparent life. I wold like my life to be as clear as a new pane of glass, without anything shameful and no dark shadows. I would like that. But if I am completely honest, I have to acknowledge secrets too painful to even tell myself. There are things I consider in the deep dark of night, secret terrors. Why are they secrets? I could easily tell either of my parents how I feel, but what would they say? Don't worry, darling, we will do our best never to die? We will never ever leave you, never contract cancer or walk in front of a bus or collapse of old age? We will not leave you alone, not ever, to navigate the world and all of its complexities without us? — Meg Rosoff

When you feel that a relationship is not same as it was and it is lacking the old charm, love, and magic - give it some space.

We often complicate things by wondering how to fix it. At times, just some space and unsaid love can heal even those wounds that are deeply engraved. — Nikita Dudani

Hey you ! out there in the cold
Getting lonely, getting old, can you feel me
Hey you ! Standing in the aisles
With itchy feet and fading smiles, can you feel me
Hey you ! don't help them to bury the light
Don't give in without a fight.
Hey you ! out there on your own
sitting naked by the phone would you touch me
Hey you ! with your ear against the wall
Waiting for someone to call out would you touch me
Hey you ! would you help me to carry the stone
Open your heart, I'm coming home
But it was only a fantasy
The wall was too high as you can see
No matter how he tried he could not break free
And the worms ate into his brain.
Hey you ! out there on the road
Always doing what you're told, can you help me
Hey you ! out there beyond the wall
Breaking bottles in the hall, can you help me
Hey you ! don't tell me there's no hope at all
Together we stand, divided we fall. — Pink Floyd

I came to feel a tenderness for them all. This was something new to me. It gave me a curious pleasure to touch them, to help them in and out of the chair, to shave their weather-toughened old faces. They had known hard use, nearly all of them. You could tell it by the way they held themselves and moved. Most of all you could tell it by their hands, which were shaped by wear and often by the twists and swellings of arthritis. They had used their hands forgetfully, as hooks and pliers and hammers, and in every kind of weather. The backs of their hands showed a network of little scars where they had been cut, nicked, thornstuck, pinched, punctured, scraped, and burned. Their faces told that they had suffered things they did not talk about.Every one of them had a good knife in his pocket, sharp, the blades whetted narrow and concave, the horn of the handle worn smooth. — Wendell Berry

People like to say, "You're only as old as you feel," but it isn't true. It's just something old people say to make themselves feel good about their age. You're as old as you are. — Andy Rooney

There is no better recreation for the mind than the study of the ancient classics. Take any one of them into your hand, be it only for half an hour, and you will feel yourself refreshed, relieved, purified, ennobled, strengthened; just as if you had quenched your thirst at some pure spring. Is this the effect of the old language and its perfect expression, or is it the greatness of the minds whose works remain unharmed and unweakened by the lapse of a thousand years? Perhaps both together. But this I know. If the threatened calamity should ever come, and the ancient languages cease to be taught, a new literature shall arise, of such barbarous, shallow and worthless stuff as never was seen before. — Arthur Schopenhauer

I never think about age. I believe your age is totally how you feel. I've seen women of thirty-five who are old and people of seventy-five who are young. As long as I look after myself physically, mentally and emotionally, I'll stay young. — Joan Collins

I've failed you," he said.
"You just stopped the boy."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know what you meant, Oliver. You count too many things as failures when they are merely setbacks." She beckoned him up, and he stood, still intimately close to her. She didn't seem bothered. "I feel safer with my old enemy beside me. — Rachel Caine

As I grabbed my cocoa, chocolate ran down my hand.
"This makes me feel like a five-year-old," I said, licking it off.
"If I ordered a sandwich at this place, do you think they'd cut the crusts off? — Mindi Scott

The old adage that people only want what they can't have or what they can't tame - is totally primitive. A being of higher origins will know instinctively that life on earth is a series of chances, moments and concepts. That's really all that you have. So when you find one of these things and it makes you burn, or it makes you feel peace inside, or it makes you look forwards and backwards and here all at the same time - that's when you know to hold onto it. And you hold onto it with every fiber of your being. Because it's in the holding on of these chances and moments and concepts that life is lived. Every other kind of living is only in vitro. I don't care what psychologists say today about how the human mind works. Because one day they will reach this pinnacle and they will see what I see and they will look upon the old ways as primitive. As long and gone. We do not wish to have what we can't have. We wish to burn in whatever flame we have stepped into. — C. JoyBell C.

There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier's sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then pile on top of that an attitude of social opprobrium, an attitude that made the fighting man feel personally morally responsible for the war, and you get your proverbial walking time bomb. — Philip Caputo

Whether you are five years old and irresistibly drawn to the piano in your home, or you are an adult who suddenly falls in love with music and decides to take lessons, the knowledge that you belong in the world of music is deep and indestructible. It is part of your basic nature, as much as the color of your eyes or the sound of your voice. Even your choice of instrument might feel choiceless; you hear a piano or a cello and somehow know that that is the instrument you must play. — Madeline Bruser

Literary friendship is impossible, it seems; at least, it is impossible for me. Indeed, all male friendships outside of work sometimes seem to be impossible: you look at each other at the restaurant at some point in the conversation and you know that each of you is thinking, man, this is futile, why are we here, we're wasting our time, we have nothing to say, we're not involved in some project together that we can bitch about, we can't flirt, we feel like dummies discussing movies or books, we aren't in some moral bind with a woman that we need to confess, we've each said the other is a genius several times already, and the whole thing is depressing and the tone is false and we might as well go home to our wives and children and rent buddy movies like Midnight Run or Planes, Trains, and Automobiles or The Pope of Greenwich Village when we need a shot of the old camaraderie. — Nicholson Baker

You think history is the history of loving hearts? You fool! Look at these millions of dead. Can you pity them, feel for them? You can nothing! There were too many. We burned them to ashes, we buried them with bulldozers. History is the history of cruelty, not love as soft men think. We have experimented with every human capacity to see which is strong and admirable and have shown that none is. There is only practicality. If the old God exists, he must be a murderer. But the one true god is Death. This is how it is - without cowardly illustrations. — Saul Bellow

She looks at me as we walk under a streetlight. "You're really handsome, you know that?"
I don't know what to say. I don't think anyone uses the word handsome anymore. I feel humbled by it. Because it's old and grandmothers say it, it seems classy and real and I feel ... handsome. It makes me smile. — A.S. King

I'm still unsure as to what draws people together, that is, beyond the really ugly things: money, beauty, family, desperation. But I suppose that if someone can make you feel like you are seeing a new world, or just an old one of the first time, you might decide that you love to be around them. — Dana Vachon

Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is ... and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be ... and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart ... no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them. — Robert A. Heinlein

I was just past forty, that age when you wake up in the morning and feel something thickening inside and only people too old to matter refer to you as a young man anymore. (The Last Days of Il Duce) — Dominic Stansberry

Keep that red-haired girl of yours in the open air all summer and don't let her read books until she gets more spring into her step." This message frightened Marilla wholesomely. She read Anne's death warrant by consumption in it unless it was scrupulously obeyed. As a result, Anne had the golden summer of her life as far as freedom and frolic went. She walked, rowed, berried, and dreamed to her heart's content; and when September came she was bright-eyed and alert, with a step that would have satisfied the Spencervale doctor and a heart full of ambition and zest once more. "I just feel like studying with might and main," she declared as she brought her books down from the attic. "Oh, you good old friends, I'm glad to see your honest face once more - yes, even you, geometry. — L.M. Montgomery

Now that I've reached the ripe old age of retirement, I feel it my duty to teach you everything I've learnt about love, so listen closely. Love is like ... That's as far as I've gotten I'm afraid. — Ben Mitchell

Do you think it's easy to just walk up to Joe DiMaggio and start up a
conversation? I've been around him at old-timers' games, and believe me, he's
someone special. It's not easy to walk over and say, 'How ya doin', Joe, whaddya
say?' You really feel as though this is the one old-timer you have to call
Mister. — Tom Seaver

You are young and energetic," she said. "It is a healthy thing for you to do. Why would I be offended? Do I suddenly own your sex, that I should be worried about you giving it away?" Vashet stopped as if something had just occurred to her. She turned to look at me. "Are you offended that I have been having sex with others all this while?" She watched my face intently. "I see you are startled by it." "I am startled," I admitted. Then I did a mental inventory and was surprised to discover I wasn't sure how I felt. "I feel I ought to be offended," I said at last. "But I don't think I am." Vashet nodded approvingly. "That is a good sign. It shows you are becoming civilized. The other feeling is what you were brought up to think. It is like an old shirt that no longer fits you. And now, when you look at it closely, you can see it was ugly to begin with. — Patrick Rothfuss

In particular I may mention Sophocles the poet, who was once asked in my presence, How do you feel about love, Sophocles? are you still capable of it? to which he replied, Hush! if you please: to my great delight I have escaped from it, and feel as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage master. I thought then, as I do now, that he spoke wisely. For unquestionably old age brings us profound repose and freedom from this and other passions. — Plato

As an old-time small-town merchant, I can tell you that nobody has more love for the heyday of the smalltown retailing era than I do. That's one of the reasons we chose to put our little Wal-Mart museum on the square in Bentonville. It's in the old Walton's Five and Dime building, and it tries to capture a little bit of the old dime store feel. But I can also tell you this: if we had gotten smug about our early success, and said, "Well, we're the best merchant in town," and just kept doing everything exactly the way we were doing it, somebody else would have come along and given our customers what they wanted, and we would be out of business today. — Sam Walton

My father prided himself on maintaining traditions that were hundreds of years old. You'll feel as if you've stepped back into the eighteenth century."
Her brows lifted in surprise. He could see the wheels turning in her clever brain, but she chose merely to nod, and perversely, though he knew he would not like it, he wanted to know what she was thinking. "Go on. Say it."
"It is nothing. Only - you are very much a man of the nineteenth century."
"You mean you're not surprised I left such a backward place."
"Such a backward place must be crying out for a man like you." Ainsley pushed her windswept hair out of her eyes. — Marguerite Kaye

So roll up your sleeves, put your mind in gear, be totally ready to receive the gift that's coming when Jesus arrives. Don't lazily slip back into those old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing. You didn't know any better then; you do now. As obedient children, let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God's life, a life energetic and blazing with holiness. God said, I am holy; you be holy. — Eugene H. Peterson

It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined
Half of the night with our old friend
Who'd showed us in the end
To a bed I reached in one drunk stride.
Already I lay snug,
And drowsy with the wine dozed on one side.

I dozed, I slept. My sleep broke on a hug,
Suddenly, from behind,
In which the full lengths of our bodies pressed:
Your instep to my heel,
My shoulder-blades against your chest.
It was not sex, but I could feel
The whole strength of your body set,
Or braced, to mine,
And locking me to you
As if we were still twenty-two
When our grand passion had not yet
Become familial.
My quick sleep had deleted all
Of intervening time and place.
I only knew
The stay of your secure firm dry embrace. — Thom Gunn

You know, just because you think bubblegum pop on the radio represents all that is wrong with society, that doesn't mean there's not someone out there who needs that shitty pop song. Maybe that shitty pop song makes them feel good, about themselves and the world. And as long as that shitty pop song doesn't infringe upon your rights to rock out to, I don't know, Subway Sect, or Siouxsie and the Banshees, or whichever old-ass band it is you worship, then who cares? — Hannah Harrington

When you live without someone for as long as I have, love becomes this abstract concept, something you attach to a memory. And when memories are that old, they feel like dreams, and you wonder if any of it was real, or if your mind created it all. — Laura Thalassa

Love will never magically make me whole. It won't heal old wounds. But when I'm around you, I do not feel as if I must be alone. I smile when you're in the room and I laugh when you're happy. I feel as if I've come home to you." He slid his fingers up her arm, around her back. "There isn't one part of me that you've flinched from. I don't know why you'd marry me, but I know why I'm desperate for you. Nobody else on earth would bring me to myself as you have. — Courtney Milan

He thought of the old commonplace about how giving up vices didn't make you live longer, but just made it feel as though you were living longer. — John Connolly

As soon as you feel too old to do a thing, do it. — Margaret Deland

To have a certain new eight-and-a-hal f-minute-old light from the sun-to feel it physically, almost as we taste things-this is where you can work with light like that. — James Turrell

I know this from the hollow sound that persists after the men's prayer, and from their faces pressed against the window of supplication. And from their coloring, the complexion of people who respond to fear of the absurd with zeal. As for me, I don't like anything that rises to heaven, I only like things affected by gravity. I'll go so far as to say I abhor religions. All of them! Because they falsify the weight of the world. Sometimes I feel like busting through the wall that separates me from my neighbor, grabbing him by the throat, and yelling at him to quit reciting his sniveling prayers, accept the world, open his eyes to his own strength, his own dignity, and stop running after a father who has absconded to heaven and is never coming back. Have a look at that group passing by, over there. Notice the little girl with the veil on her head, even though she's not old enough to know what a body is, or what desire is. What can you do with such people? Eh? — Kamel Daoud

It's sadly predictable that the only way you can come up with a way to celebrate the liberation you feel at leaving the old system behind is by coming up with a "system of liberation", as if such a thing could exist - but that's what we can expect from those who have never known anything other than systems and systematizing, I guess. — Mao Zedong

Late-Flowering Lust

My head is bald, my breath is bad,
Unshaven is my chin,
I have not now the joys I had
When I was young in sin.
I run my fingers down your dress
With brandy-certain aim
And you respond to my caress
And maybe feel the same.
But I've a picture of my own
On this reunion night,
Wherein two skeletons are shewn
To hold each other tight;
Dark sockets look on emptiness
Which once was loving-eyed,
The mouth that opens for a kiss
Has got no tongue inside.
I cling to you inflamed with fear
As now you cling to me,
I feel how frail you are my dear
And wonder what will be--
A week? or twenty years remain?
And then--what kind of death?
A losing fight with frightful pain
Or a gasping fight for breath?
Too long we let our bodies cling,
We cannot hide disgust
At all the thoughts that in us spring
From this late-flowering lust. — John Betjeman

Right now, as I've gotten older, my tics sustain for five or ten years. So, I can deal with them on a daily basis; I know how it affects my body. But when you're 10 years old, and every three months a tic comes along, it's daunting because you don't know what the next one is going to look like, what it's going to feel like. — Tim Howard

Because the end of a friendship isn't even formally acknowledged - no Little Talk, no papers served - you walk around effectively heartbroken but embarrassed to admit it, even to yourself. It's a special, open-ended kind of pain, like having a disease that doesn't even have a name. You worry you must be pathetically oversensitive to feel so wounded over such a thing. You can't tell people, "My friend broke up with me," without sounding like a nine-year-old. The only phrase I can think of that even recognizes this kind of hurt - "You look like you just lost your best friend" - is only ever spoken by adults to children. You can give yourself the same ineffectual lecture your parents used to give you as a kid: anyone who'd treat you this way isn't a very good friend and doesn't deserve your friendship anyway. But the nine-year-old in you knows that the reason they've ditched you is that you suck. — Tim Kreider

Pulling back, he gave her a little space and grinned as she found her balance again.
"Do you think that will ever get old?" Harper asked with an embarrassed blush.
"Christ, I hope not. Just remember how you feel right now because you might be really mad at me in about one minute."
"Uh-oh. I don't think I like the sound of that." Harper raised an eyebrow at him.
He took her hand and led her toward the studio before pulling her in front of him, her back to his chest. It was the safest position to avoid a kick in the nuts and the best position to block a fast escape.
He felt Harper's quick intake of breath as she turned to face him with a hand over her mouth.
"What did you do?" she said through her fingers.
"Happy birthday, sweetheart." He pushed her through the door as everyone inside shouted, "Surprise! — Scarlett Cole

Most people remember being 4 objectively, as if they're seeing a movie of a 4-year-old. But me, if you ask me to think about when I'm 4, I can feel myself being 4, and I am there, looking out through my 4-year-old eyes. — Lois Lowry

There's no point in going on if you feel that way. No point at all. You must be filled with expectancy. You must be awash in hope. You must wonder who will love you, whom you will love next." "I am done with being loved," Edward told her. "I'm done with loving. It's too painful." "Pish," said the old doll. "Where is your courage?" "Somewhere else, I guess," said Edward. "You disappoint me," she said. "You disappoint me greatly. If you have no intention of loving or being loved, then the whole journey is pointless. You might as well leap from this shelf right now and let yourself shatter into a million pieces. Get it over with. Get it all over with now. — Kate DiCamillo

When Clark was asked about liberation from Moosburg he said, "It was a very emotional period, especially for a few of us who had been very old prisoners. We were closely bonded, so some of most wonderful friends I've ever had came out of those camps. We stayed together and helped each other. None of us feel it was a total dead loss, the experience I mean. A lot of us learned a lot about ourselves, about our limits, and we certainly learned how to get along with other people in difficult circumstances, which is a very important lesson. So I am sure that there are many people who don't share that view. But they've disappeared. They don't come to reunions. You never hear from them. I just hope they are happy too. But I doubt whether they're as happy as we are." What — Donald E. Phillips

I love telling stories. I think of myself as a storyteller, and I don't feel bound by being just a singer or an actress. First, I'm a storyteller, and history is stories - the most compelling stories. There is a lot you can find out about yourself through knowing about history. I have always been attracted to things that are old. I have just always found such things interesting and compelling. — Zooey Deschanel

When I talk about my husband, I feel as if people roll their eyes. It's like when you're 16 and order a martini, and the waiter says, 'Do you think I'm stupid?'. They can't grasp that I'm old enough to be married. — Megan Fox

Nothing, in truth, can ever replace a lost companion. Old comrades cannot be manufactured. There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories, so many bad times endured together, so many quarrels, reconciliations, heartfelt impulses. Friendships like that cannot be reconstructed. If you plant an oak, you will hope in vain to sit soon under its shade.
For such is life. We grow rich as we plant through the early years, but then come the years when time undoes our work and cuts down our trees. One by one our comrades deprive us of their shade, and within our mourning we always feel now the secret grief of growing old.
If I search among my memories for those whose taste is lasting, if I write the balance sheet of the moments that truly counted, I surely find those that no fortune could have bought me. You cannot buy the friendship of a companion bound to you forever by ordeals endured together. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

That old if you 'need anything, let me know,' is a total crock. You hear people say it all the time, but you never see anyone actually call up the person who said it and say, "Hey, remember when you said to let you know if i needed anything? Well, I'm feeling really overwhelmed. Could you please come clean my kitchen, I'd feel like I had a bit of a head start." You will never hear someone say that, because then the person asking the other person to clean their kitchen is seen as a helpless, incompetent dick. -Diana Rowland (My life as a white trash zombie) — Diana Rowland

You think the things you can touch and feel are the things that are real, but they are not. Over time, they all get old and decline. The people, the houses, the rocks and the mountains: one day they will all crumble. This is because they are not as real as the things that last forever. It is another one of the lessons we come to teach. — Kate McGahan

But you just know when someone's there, don't you? You can feel them in the house, as if--oh, I don't know, I'm an old woman rambling--but it's as if your heart knows that their heart is beating somewhere and everything's all right. — Jacqueline Winspear

DEAR MISS MANNERS:
I a tired of being treated like a child. My father says it's because I am a child
I am twelve-and-a-half years old
but it still isn't fair. If I go into a store to buy something, nobody pays any attention to me, or if they do, it's to say, "Leave that alone," "Don't touch that," although I haven't done anything. My money is as good as anybody's, but because I am younger, they feel they can be mean to me. It happens to me at home, too. My mother's friend who comes over after dinner sometimes, who doesn't have any children of her own and doesn't know what's what, likes to say to me, "Shouldn't you be in bed by now,dear?" when she doesn't even know what my bedtime is supposed to be. Is there any way I can make these people stop?
GENTLE READER:
Growing up is the best revenge. — Judith Martin

URSKADAMUS TINE SMYORFIN MASACH!" Edme wasn't sure what to believe now - her ears or her eye? There was only one wolf who swore in both the language of bears and that of Old Wolf. "Faolan?" "Who else, for the love of Lupus? One would think you saw a ghost." "But with all that frost - you look like a lochin." Faolan gave a dismissive bark. "You should see yourself," Edme persisted. "You've got icicles hanging from your chin fur. Your belly fur looks as if it's ... " "I know! I know! I can feel it!" he replied crankily. "You look absolutely ancient. I mean older than the Sark." "Thanks a lot," Faolan huffed. "Well, what did you find?" "No meat." His voice dwindled. — Kathryn Lasky

I consider you as old as you look and feel. And in that case I feel - I feel I'm about 39, like Jack Benny. — Joan Collins

Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? — Herman Melville

In the struggle to remain a complete person and to love from her fullness instead of her inadequacy a woman may appear hard. She may feel her early conditioning tugging her in the direction of surrender, but she ought to remember that she was originally loved for herself; she ought to hang on to herself and not find herself nagging, helpless, irritable and trapped. Perhaps I am not old enough yet to promise that the self-reliant woman is always loved, but she cannot be lonely as long as there are people in the world who need her joy and her strength, but certainly in my experience it has always been so. Lovers who are free to go when they are restless always come back; lovers who are free to change remain interesting. The bitter animosity and obscenity of divorce is unknown where individuals have not become Siamese twins. A lover who comes to your bed of his own accord is more likely to sleep with his arms around you all night than a lover who has nowhere else to sleep. — Germaine Greer

Traffic crawls
Cell phone calls
Talk radio screams at me
But through my tinted window
I see a little girl
Rust red minivan
She's got chocolate on her face
Got little hands and she waves at me
Yeah, she smiles at me
Well hello world
How you been
Good to see you my old friend
Sometimes I feel
Cold as steel
Broken like I'm never gonna heal
And I see a light
A little hope
In a little girl
Hello world — Lady Antebellum

It seemed so natural, receiving it, watching others receive it, assuming that the approval of others determined our worth. Then one day we found we couldn't feel any worth without it. We'd forgotten that we were gifted in ways unimaginable, created with a unique purpose like no other, that people are hurting, that we beat that same hurt and we can help them. There is no one as valuable as you. Unlearn that old lie. — Lee Goff

MOST CITIES ARE designed on grids that fill them with hard angles. Not Amsterdam, which has a softness about it imparted by the watery curves of the 16th-century canals that fan out through the city. Though its gabled canal houses and narrow medieval streets give it an undeniable old-world charm, Amsterdam's thoroughly contemporary takes on arts, architecture and design show that it has modernity in a firm embrace. It's a city that invites wandering, with a tram system and a plenitude of bicycles (about as many as there are residents) that make navigating as fun as it is easy. Thanks to the locals, most of whom speak English, you'll feel instantly welcome and will be spared the indignity of trying to pronounce Dutch (don't even try). Spend as much time as possible on foot, the better to enjoy the city's theatrical quality: The huge, unshaded windows of the canal homes allow you to peer right in, testimony to the Dutch ethos of having nothing to hide. — Anonymous

No one wants to go into a nursing home. My patients fear it; families often feel terrible guilt when the time comes: it is thought of as an abandonment. Nursing homes are where we place our bad outcomes, our frail, our no-longer-independents. They are places people go to wait safely to die. The old doubly incontinents. You might have stood up to Stalin, you might still read Tolstoy, but if you're losing it from both the front and back and you're not a two-year-old, you're going to be hidden away.
"Don't know the nursing homes, they do a pretty good job," a geriatrician said to me. And most of the time they perform their function: as a holding bay for old people. Most of the time. — Karen Hitchcock

I feel pressure as a fan. I don't really feel pressure from the fans, if that makes sense. I worked on other movies, like the X-Men movies, that have big fan followings. And if you start to get lost in those voices, you will be completely lost. I feel the pressure of the 6-year-old me. — Simon Kinberg

Improvising, I participated in the discussion, and questioned another woman in the group. I asked her how old she was and she answered, "Thirty." I replied, "No, you are not thirty but instead eighty and lying on your deathbed. And now you are looking back on your life, a life which was childless but full of financial success and social prestige." And then I invited her to imagine what she would feel in this situation. "What will you think of it? What will you say to yourself?" Let me quote what she actually said from a tape which was recorded during that session. "Oh, I married a millionaire, I had an easy life full of wealth, and I lived it up! I flirted with men; I teased them! But now I am eighty; I have no children of my own. Looking back as an old woman, I cannot see what all that was for; actually, I must say, my life was a failure! — Viktor E. Frankl

George Oppen is a tough old bird. If you've never seen what [he] sees, it's because you haven't sat still long enough and looked as he has. The things he sees feel like the gnarled bark of a tree. The tree is there too. You can put your weight against it. It won't give. — Carl Rakosi

Lord, why was it his child you gave to me? Why did you send me here to this man so that I remember the things done to me? Shimei interceded and brought me to you, and you healed me. Now, I see Atretes and feel the old wounds reopened. Hold me fast, Father. Don't let me slip; don't let me fall. Don't let me think as I used to think or live as I used to live. "Life is cruel, Atretes, but you have a choice. Choose forgiveness and be free." "Forgiveness!" The word came out of the dark shadows like a curse. "There are some things in this world that can never be forgiven." Her eyes burned with tears. "I once felt the same way, but it turns back on you and eats you alive. When Christ saved me, everything changed. The world didn't look the same." "The world doesn't change." "No. The world didn't. I did." He — Francine Rivers

Allow yourself to feel those old feelings, but now, instead of engaging in the habitual self-defensive patterns, begin practicing new patterns. In the process of changing the patterns, the residual trauma will emerge. Know that you can feel all your Feels and still be safe. Know that you did everything you could in that moment to protect yourself; grant yourself forgiveness for the things you may still blame yourself for, recognizing that the trauma is the fault of the perpetrator alone. And imagine yourself as you are now, safe and whole. — Emily Nagoski

He took another swallow of beer. "Are things as bad as they seem? Or have I just gotten old like my da, and now everything tastes a little bitter compared to when I was a boy?" Kote wiped at the bar for a long moment, as if reluctant to speak. "I think things are usually bad one way or another," he said. "It might be that only us older folk can see it." Graham began to nod, then frowned. "Except you're not old, are you? I forget that most times." He looked the red-haired man up and down. "I mean, you move around old, and you talk old, but you're not, are you? I'll bet you're half my age." He squinted at the innkeeper. "How old are you, anyway?" The innkeeper gave a tired smile. "Old enough to feel old. — Patrick Rothfuss

The Time Line is great for getting things into perspective when you feel a bit lost and lacking direction or if you have a big change coming up such as moving to secondary school, your parents splitting up or having a new family arrangement. When you experience grief or loss, whether that is for a person or a part of your life such as leaving your Primary School, you can travel back along the time line, identify which skills you need from your old life, anchor them and bring them into the present as you move forward to Secondary School. Once you've done the Time Line a few times it will be in your head and you can conjure up the image and the steps without moving. This can be useful in situations when you can't actually move physically, in class for instance. — Judy Bartkowiak

CREEP
Other people have written about war. About how one plane sweeps over and the whole place is ablaze in minutes. About how a young man may kill another young many with perfect legality. I prefer to write about less sudden things. About how we inch further away without even noticing. And then it's too late. Or is it? No it's not too late to say sorry, we were wrong, let's try again to get along. No, it's not too late to quit lying, halt the greed, stop polluting air earth and seas. I prefer to write about less noisy things. About change happening so gradually that one day you just accept the world as different. And you don't question because you're old, and you don't feel like making waves, and anyway, they'd say you were insane ... — Jay Woodman

My husband. No! A moment!" He was tearing himself apart from her. "We shall not be separated long. I feel that this will break my heart by-and-bye; but I will do my duty while I can, and when I leave her, God will raise up friends for her, as He did for me." Her father had followed her, and would have fallen on his knees to both of them, but that Darnay put out a hand and seized him, crying: "No, no! What have you done, what have you done, that you should kneel to us! We know now, what a struggle you made of old. We know, now what you underwent when you suspected my descent, and when you knew it. We know now, the natural antipathy you strove against, and conquered, for her dear sake. We thank you with all our hearts, and all our love and duty. Heaven be with you!" Her father's only answer was to draw his hands through his white hair, and wring them with a shriek of anguish. — Charles Dickens

An old girlfriend is a gun in your belly. It's no longer loaded, so when you see her, all you feel is the hollow mechanical click in your gut, and possibly the ghost of an echo, sense memory from when it used to carry live rounds. Occasionally, though, there's a bullet you missed, lying dormant in its overlooked chamber, and when that trigger gets pulled, the unexpected gunshot is deafening even as the forgotten bullet rips its way through the tissue and muscle of your midsection and out into the light of day. Seeing Carly is like that. Even though we haven't spoken in almost ten years, it's an explosion, and in that one instant every memory, every feeling, comes flooding back as fresh as if it were yesterday. — Jonathan Tropper

Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. — Herman Melville

Look at the two of us, barely out of childhood and already we're too old-fashioned for this changing world. Is it possible to be born old? Because I certainly feel it sometimes. How can we hope to stand against unstoppable progress; how can we possibly win a war against the forces of science?"
Oskan snorted.
"Which question do you want me to answer first? Born old? Yes, right now I feel ninety. And as for the rest, we're not fighting progress or science, they're both ideas that belong to people. Ideas that should help us to understand the beauty of our world and improve the lives of everything that lives in it. But the Empire has kidnapped them, and progress of its sort means sweeping aside everything that isn't new, whether good or bad. And to the Empire science is just a means of creating more efficient ways of killing people. — Stuart Hill

Sloane gave him a questioning look as Dex returned his phone to his pocket before walking over to the window and knocking on it. "What are you doing?" Sloane asked. "I'm wondering if this is bulletproof." "Why?" "Because I want to know if I can shoot my way through it before trying to jump out." He turned to the couch and pointed to it. "Do you think if I dramatically throw myself onto this like one of those old Hollywood starlets it'll have the same effect? I feel like I need to have some kind of bitch fit right now. — Charlie Cochet

No more quickly can a person rob you of your joy and peace than when that individual succeeds at making you feel like you're less than worthy of God as compared to his/her own self. The old adage "You're on your way to hell, and I'm on my way to heaven" spoken or implied to another, is the most predominantly effective way to make someone feel better about himself; and he doesn't even have to prove he's better in this life on earth because now he can just say "Wait 'til I'm looking down at you while you're in hell!" But don't be robbed of your joy and peace, individuals or groups of people like that don't know where God is; He is a whisper-distance away from you, is all. — C. JoyBell C.

Why do old houses creak so much?" he asked idly, playing with her braid and drawing the silky end across her cheek.
"When all the warmth fades at night, it makes the old boards contract and slip against each other."
"A bloody massive house, it is. And you were left to your own devices in this place for too long. I didn't understand before, how alone you were."
"I had the twins for company. I watched over them."
"But there was no one to watch over you."
A sense of uneasiness came over her, as it always did whenever she reflected on her childhood. It had seemed as if her very survival had depended on never complaining or drawing attention to herself. "Oh I- I didn't need that."
"All little girls need to feel safe and wanted. — Lisa Kleypas

I set my face toward the sun again, and I think about my old life - the one I feel as though I've abandoned somehow. It hurts to think of it that way. And even though I know it wasn't perfect, I look back now, and all I see is perfection. Every soft whisper, every spoken word, every gentle touch - it's all perfect. Time won't let me see it otherwise. They're all just perfect memories - perfect, untouchable moments that came and went so softly that they almost feel as if they were always just a dream. — Laura Miller

On the issue of censorship of pornography and rock music, do you see that as a religious issue, too?
Yes, I do. Incidentally, I don't like rock music. I never have liked it. I have never understood it, and I can't hear the lyrics. I think that most people can't hear them either. I'm still stuck with Chopin and Beethoven and Bach, and all those old ones. The whole point is, I feel that everyone who wants to say anything, do anything, should be able to say anything or do anything, within the limits of not hurting another person. And I don't see how rock music hurts anybody, or I don't see that pornography hurts anybody. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Never, never marry, my friend. Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could, and until you've stopped loving the woman you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing ... Otherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost. It will all go on trifles. Yes, yes, yes! Don't look at me with such astonishment. If you expect something from yourself in the future, then at every step you'll feel that it's all over for you, it's all closed, except the drawing room, where you'll stand on the same level as a court flunkey and an idiot ... — Leo Tolstoy

He was forty, which is the most frightening age in life. You don't feel sorry for the old, because they are old already; you don't feel sorry for the dead, because they are dead already. But you do feel sorry for those approaching old age, those approaching death. Forty! At fairgrounds you see roller coasters dashing up a steep slope followed by a steep drop and then another ascent. At the top of the slope, or rather just before the top, the vehicle has used up all the energy it acquired in the descent and it slows down and hesitates as if the top were unattainable, as it it were terrified of the approaching plunge. The man approaching forty is in a similar state of hesitation and uncertainty; his pace slackens, he is paralyzed by the approaching summit and the descent he cannot see but knows lies just ahead. — Pitigrilli

Maybe in fairytales you're only as old as you feel, but here in L. A. you're every second as old as your pores. — Lois Greiman