Old Grandpa Quotes & Sayings

I used to write things that might have sounded better coming out of an older person's voice or vision. Hence, "grandpa-boy." I'm an old man, but I'm a boy. A really old boy! — Paul Westerberg

There now. Just look at what your grandpa did to that poor old nigger." "Yes," I said. "Now he can spend day after day marching in parades. If it hadn't been for my grandfather, he'd have to work like whitefolks. — William Faulkner

I am an old geezer: a grandpa kind of a guy. I was born October 19, 1931. I have gray hair, a beard, and a little pot belly. I have two children who are over 30 years old and a sweet little granddaughter who is 11 years old. — Ed Emberley

My dad knows every single accent from being an old Yiddish grandpa to being Indian or Jamaican. It was very cool to grow up with that. — Ashley Bell

My grandpa used to be in the Royal Air Force when he was younger," Liam tells me. "He loved to fly. He had his own airplane. Still does. When I was twelve, he told me that he thought it was time that I learned how to fly a plane."

"You flew a plane when you were twelve?" I give him a shocked look.

"My grandpa's not exactly on the conventional side." The fondness on his face tells me that his grandpa means a great deal to him. "And when I say 'fly'" - he air quotes - "it was him flying and me being copilot. But twelve-year-old me thought that he meant literally fly the plane. So, I was shitting myself."

"I can imagine. I'd shit if someone said that to me now, and I'm twenty-two."

Liam laughs. "I think you'd probably surprise yourself."

"No, I'm pretty sure I'd surprise the person sitting with me - you know, after I shit myself. — Samantha Towle

I'd like to go back to five years old again. Just sometimes. To be turning over rocks and looking for pill bugs and holding earthworms, playing dolls, erecting forts, digging through dirt for marbles, burrowing in leaf piles, failing at igloo building, when my biggest concern was going to sleep with the lights off. I wish I was five again, before things got hard, before I was forced to grow up way too early and been stuck in this "adult" thing way too long. I wish I could sit in my Grandpa's lap and let him sing me crazy Irish songs and go over the names of the planets. "Gwampa, tell me about Outer Space." ... "Gwampa, sing the Swimming Song."
I wish I could go back there, just for a little while, and pick raspberries by myself in the sun and find secret hideaways and not hurt, not worry, not carry the heavy things. If I could be five years old ... just for a few minutes. Remember what it felt like to be free. That would be something. — Jennifer DeLucy

I think he is just an old man who still believes in his country, his old Germany. we all wanted a new Germany, but not at the cost of this madman, Hitler. Your grandpa can't be blamed for loving his old Germany. — Ann Rinaldi

My wife makes fun of me by calling me a grandpa because I have very little patience for inconsiderate children. So if we're walking in the mall, and some kid goes by really fast on a skateboard, I become the grumpiest eighty-five-year-old man in the world and start screaming at them. — Rob McClure

She did an excellent job, dear. We have a new water heater now. A waterless water heater. I plan to examine it tomorrow."
"No!" his entire family said, making him jump.
Even the granddaughter on his lap looked up into his face and said with the solemn wisdom of a four-year-old, "Don't, Grandpa. — Shelly Laurenston

When I was five, a tree was my best friend. An old peppercorn on Grandpa's little farm. I'd haul myself into its calloused arms and hide from the world in its foliage. Apart from the pleasure of looking down on unsuspecting adults, I could be Robin Hood in a one-tree Sherwood Forest or Johnny Weissmuller in his jungle. I fell out of my friend once while Tarzan-ing. Gashed a large chunk from a leg. Almost 70 years later, there's still a scar. — Phillip Adams

I always hated those classic kid movies like Old Yeller or The Yearling where the beloved pet dies. What would be so wrong with having those damn kids learn their lessons about mortality from watching Grandpa kick? Then at least the dog would be around to comfort them. — Merrill Markoe

It's a different story because guess what, the kid is only 28 years old, 28. He's not his dad, not his grandpa. He's 28 years old. — Dennis Rodman

When I was 7 years old, I put on shows for everyone at my grandpa's funeral. I was always the little entertainer. — Natalie Portman

Once, I went speeding past an old couple and smiled as I imagined their conversation: him grumbling about me and her telling him not to be such an old grouch. Then, suddenly I was in tears, thinking, 'I'll never get to be a grumpy old grandpa!' — Neil Peart

Earlier, when I made my coffee (after releasing my grateful geese), I sat at the big Northridge desk and got out the Edward Curtis portfolio for breakfast reading. When I untied the first folio there was a note - "Dalva & Ruth. Wash your hands. I love you. Grandpa." A simple old note, brittle with age, but I was momentarily overcome with loneliness for her; at the same time, though, I knew in a deeper sense that I was totally out of the running. In the long and short of it, love is a more difficult subject than sex. Or history. I — Jim Harrison

I used to envy kids who had an old-fashioned Grandpa. Not any more. I've got a new ambition. Now I just want to become a modern-type Grandpa myself-and really start living. — Hal Boyle

A true nature is a gloomy monolith, sort of like that old black rotary phone that I had to sing 'Happy Birthday' to Grandpa on. But novelists, damn us, still need true natures - so we can give them to our protagonists. And so readers can vaguely predict how they'll behave when we trap them in 'situations' that they can't IM their way out of. — Walter Kirn

I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I moved to L.A. when I was about eleven years old. I always go back to Milwaukee whenever I can. Just chill with my grandpa and my grandmother and just be with family, be with people that were there before I got a million views on YouTube because of my music video. — Jacob Latimore

I'm really sorry, Jess, but she's going to have to have your room.'

'My room?' exploded Jess. 'There's a perfectly good spare room upstairs!'

'Yes, but you see, darling, Granny can't manage stairs quite so easily anymore. Since Grandpa died and she had that fall, you know- well, her house is too much for her to manage on her own. [...] Granny has to be on the ground floor, love. She can use the groundfloor loo, and we'll convert the old coal shed at the back into a bathroom.'

Jess was too furious to speak. No, wait, she wasn't. 'Where am I supposed to sleep then?' she snapped. 'Out on the pavement? — Sue Limb

We can afford the workers' compensation, Harry - he'll watch what he says the time next, won't he?" Nils would say. "The 'next time,' Nils," Grandpa Harry would gently correct his old friend. — John Irving

Somebody tell me that I should just go speak to the kings again."
"uh," Sing said, "didn't I just do that?"
"I need to her it again, Sing," Grandpa Smedry said. "I'm old and stubborn! — Brandon Sanderson

Isn't it so weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn't going to be room to bury anyone anymore? For my ninth birthday last year, Grandma gave me a subscription to National Geographic, which she calls "the National Geographic." She also gave me a white blazer, because I only wear white clothes, and it's too big to wear so it will last me a long time. She also gave me Grandpa's camera, which I loved for two reasons. I asked why he didn't take it with him when he left her. She said, "Maybe he wanted you to have it."
I said, "But I was negative-thirty years old." She said, "Still." Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn't, because there aren't enough skulls! — Jonathan Safran Foer

Here I am in the garden laughing an old woman with heavy breasts and a nicely mapped face how did this happen well that's who I wanted to be at last a woman in the old style sitting stout thighs apart under a big skirt grandchild sliding on off my lap a pleasant summer perspiration that's my old man across the yard he's talking to the meter reader he's telling him the world's sad story how electricity is oil or uranium and so forth I tell my grandson run over to your grandpa ask him to sit beside me for a minute I am suddenly exhausted by my desire to kiss his sweet explaining lips. — Grace Paley

I got this month's delivery bill today - you're practically living off pastries!"

"The pastries are easier on my teeth," Grandpa called after him with a smile.

"That wouldn't be an issue if you would get new teeth!" John's voice carried in from the kitchen.

Grandpa pretended not to hear him. His memory might have gone to shit, but there were a few things about being old that he really enjoyed. — April Adams

I often wondered after David's death: Had they known something then? Did their very souls recognize each other? Did Jacob, closer to God than anyone else I knew, somehow sense this was the last time he would see his grandpa? Had
there been a message to the little boy in David's long-held gaze? Did these two people - the six-year-old boy and the sixty-year-old man - realize something the rest of us didn't? — Mary Potter Kenyon

What's sad is that an 80-year-old grandpa has to be the open-minded one. Old people aren't old because of their age, but because of what's in their heads. They are horrified at this, but they aren't horrified at what's happening in the streets? — Jose Mujica

I'm an old man, now. I've been alone since my 17th birthday. I'd wanted to marry, have a bunch of kids, and maybe be a grandpa. The big family around the Thanksgiving table, laughing and pouring wine and cracking jokes and harmlessly teasing the missus - I wanted that. I wanted to do something good with my life - something right. I didn't want what happened to Danny, my best childhood friend, to be the only mark I'd ever make in this world. But I thought it best not to fancy such hopes and dreams: a family, love. I'd been cursed by my best friend, and I thought it right not to inflict that curse on anyone who'd be foolish enough to love me. — J. Tonzelli

I bet it's never happened to you.
She was right. But that was only because I'd been five years old when Grandpa had started my training. When I'd thought there were monsters under the bed, he taught me how to do a proper sweep to get rid of them. — Alyxandra Harvey

My grandma Ruthie, Jettie's sister, had been married four times, so many times I started calling every old man I saw at the grocery store Grandpa. — Molly Harper

I don't want just 25-year-old girls watching my show. I want Grandma, Grandpa and Mom and Dad and the kids. I just want everyone to hear good music. — Drake Bell

Everyone has got their own ideas and they push them and say to hell with everyone else. That's the history of the human race. It got us on top, only now it is pushing us off. The thing is that people will put up with any kind of discomfort, and dying babies, and old age at thirty as long as it has always been that way. Try to get them to change and they fight you, even while they're dying, saying it was good enough for grandpa so it's good enough for me. Bango, dead. — Harry Harrison