Joyce Carol Oates on age

Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost.

Prose — it might be speculated — is discourse; poetry ellipsis.

My theory is that literature is essential to society in the way that dreams are essential to our lives.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.
But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

Jack Benny1894–1974Often credited to Mark Twain