“At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”
Growing older changes how we see everything — time, love, ambition, regret. These quotes capture the full arc of aging, from the stubborn optimism of youth to the hard-earned clarity that only comes with years behind you. Whether you are twenty and curious or eighty and reflective, there is something here that will land.
“My husband gave me a necklace. It's fake. I requested fake. Maybe I'm paranoid, but in this day and age, I don't want something around my neck that's worth more than my head.”
“At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”
“I could always sing, from a really young age, but my voice was really weird. I used to make my mum turn up the radio every day in our house. She was well into music so I got that from her.”
“I came back to work when my children were two months old. At that early age, they seem to have little awareness of anybody but their Raggedy Ann dolls, so it wasn't a matter of them missing me. I was missing them.”
“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
“No matter what age you are, or what your circumstances might be, you are special, and you still have something unique to offer. Your life, because of who you are, has meaning.”
“I'm 36 and if I met a woman of my own age and married her, I'd also be marrying her former life, her past. It might be OK for some people - I don't want to judge it or anything - but it's not for me. It would destroy my creativity.”
“I'm totally into new age and self-help books. I used to work in a bookstore and that's the section they gave me, and I got way into it. I just loved the power of positive thinking, letting yourself go.”
“I cried on my 18th birthday. I thought 17 was such a nice age. You're young enough to get away with things, but you're old enough, too.”
“Well, once you've resigned yourself to the fact that you are the more mature pop performer and you're past the age you ever thought you would do it, you might as well do it as long as you can. As long as I can still lift a microphone, then I'll do it, you know.”
“There are people whose watch stops at a certain hour and who remain permanently at that age.”
“Right up until the time I retired at age 37, I felt like there were still things that I could do better.”
“The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.”
“No, no, I was only funny on stage, really. I, I, think I was funny as a person toward my classmates when I was very young. You know, when I was a child, up to about the age of 12.”
“If you're extremely, painfully frightened of age, it shows.”
“Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever.”