On Aging

One of the strange things about adulthood is that you are your current self, but you are also all the selves you used to be, the ones you grew out of but can't ever quite get rid of. 
~ John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet 

Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.
~ Gloria Steinem 

…yesterday I happened to notice in the mirror that while I have long since grown used to my beard being very grey indeed, I was not prepared to discover that my eyebrows are becoming noticeably shaggy. I feel the tomb is just around the corner. And there are all these books I haven't read yet, even if I am simultaneously reading at least twenty...
~ Edward Gorey, Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey & Peter F. Neumeyer 

The wisest are the most annoyed at the loss of time. 
~ Dante Alighieri  

(Idea for a ghost story: a woman gets old and falls out of time and realizes that she’s become invisible.)
~ Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel 

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
~ Mark Twain

Keeping up the appearance of having all your marbles is hard work, but important. 
~ Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants 

The older I get the less I care what other people think of me. Therefore the older I get the more I enjoy life.
~ Oscar Auliq-Ice 

Wisdom is the reward for surviving our own stupidity. 
~ Brian Rathbone, Regent 

We're all fools," said Clemens, "all the time. It's just we're a different kind each day. We think, I'm not a fool today. I've learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we're not perfect and live accordingly. 
~ Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man 

One of the seats of emotion and memory in the brain is the amygdala, he explained. When something threatens your life, this area seems to kick into overdrive, recording every last detail of the experience. The more detailed the memory, the longer the moment seems to last. "This explains why we think that time speeds up when we grow older," Eagleman said--why childhood summers seem to go on forever, while old age slips by while we’re dozing. The more familiar the world becomes, the less information your brain writes down, and the more quickly time seems to pass.
~ Burkhard Bilger writing about David Eagleman and the mysteries of the brain 

I reckon responsible behavior is something to get when you grow older. Like varicose veins. 
~ Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters 

And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look and feel like shit.
~ Martin Amis, London Fields