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36-hour erections and these poor old dried out old wives, and these guys on top of them – in and out, in and out, in and out – they’re gonna catch them on fire! Yes! That’s what happened two years ago in Malibu. Joan Rivers, Don’t Start With Me, Netflix 2012
Most people know more as they get older:
I give all that the cold shoulder.
I spent my second quarter-century
Losing what I had learnt at university.
And refusing to take in what had happened since.
Now I know none of the names in the public prints,
And am starting to give offence by forgetting faces
And swearing I’ve never been in certain places.
It will be worth it, if in the end I manage
To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.
Then there will be nothing I know.
My mind will fold in itself, like fields, like snow. Philip Larkin, The Winter Palace
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age. Philip Larkin, Dockery & Son, 1964
Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside your head, and people in them, acting.
People you know, yet can’t quite name. Philip Larkin, The Old Fools
These market-dames, mid-aged, with lips thin-drawn,
And tissues sere,
Are they the ones we loved in years agone,
And courted here? ... Thomas Hardy, Former Beauties
Hope Springs Eternal: Comic Bob lingers a while on the road to Heaven: Veteran comedian Bob Hope was celebrating with friends last night as his final days entered their THIRD successive year. Family and friends of the 98-year-old Hollywood star have been holding a round-the-clock bedside vigil since he began fading fast in June 1999. Viz magazine 30 January 2018
The Tory manifesto had some incredibly unpopular policies: the most unpopular one obviously this idea that if you’re a pensioner, you get dementia – you might lose your house. That’s the most unpopular policy you can come up with for pensioners. For pensioners that’s like putting VAT on racism. And it amazes me – pensioners won’t just acquiesce into having a Conservative government they’ll actually go out and vote for it. These people will crawl along the pavement to go and vote themselves out of their own house! Frankie Boyle’s New World Order I, BBC 2017
A test and trace app has been launched in England. Unfortunately, the elderly will have to be shown how to download the App by a young person. And the proximity will make it inevitable that they get Covid and die. Frankie Boyle’s New World Order s4e5, BBC 2020
All the world is sad and dreary
Everywhere I roam,
Oh! Darkies, how my heart grows weary,
Far from the old folks at home. Stephen Collins Foster, The Old Folks at Home, 1851
The older I get the more of my mother I see in myself. Nancy Friday, ‘My Mother, My Self’, 1977
Granny Trill and Granny Wallon were traditional ancients of a kind we won’t see today, the last of that dignity of grandmothers to whom age was its own embellishment. The grandmothers of those days dressed for the part in that curious but endearing uniform which is now known to us only through music-hall. And our two old neighbours, when setting forth on errands, always prepared themselves scrupulously so. They wore high laced boots and long muslin dresses, beaded chokers and candlewick shawls, crowned by tall poke bonnets tied with trailing ribbons and smothered with inky sequins. They looked like starlings, flecked with jet, and they walked in a tinkle of darkness.
Those severe and similar old bodies enthralled me when they dressed that way. When I finally became King (I used to think) I would command a parade of grandmas, and drill them, and march them up and down – rank upon rank of hobbling boots, nodding bonnets, flying shawls, and furious chewing faces. They would be gathered from all the towns and villages and brought to my palace in wagon-loads. No more than a monarch’s whim, of course, like eating cocoa or drinking jellies; but far more spectacular any day than those usual trudging guardsmen. Laurie Lee, Cider with Rosie
Let’s buy a pack of cards, good wine, bridge scores, knitting needles, all the paraphernalia needed to fill an enormous void, everything needed to hide that horror – the old woman. Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, 1873-1954, Cheri, 1920
The greatest fully authenticated age to which any human has ever lived is 122 years 164 days by Jeanne Louise Calment (France). Guinness World Records 2005 (50th edition)
There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth. Martin Luther King
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep. W B Yeats, The Collected Poems
You think it horrible that lust and rage
Should dance attendance upon my old age;
They were not such a plague when I was young;
What else have I to spur me into song? W B Yeats, The Spur, 1939
I am sick of portraits and wish very much to take up my viol da Gamba and walk off to some sweet village when I can paint landscapes and enjoy the fag-end of life in quietness and ease. Thomas Gainsborough
Most artists go potty as they get older: dafter and madder as they get more celibate. So I am consciously going to do that. Peter Blake
I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me – they’re cramming for their final exam. George Carlin
One great thing about getting old is that you can get out of all sorts of social obligations just by saying you’re too tired. George Carlin
The new policy is to integrate the old people’s society by letting them roam round the streets all day. The Comic Strip Presents … s4e5: Didn’t You Kill My Brother? probation officer, Channel 4 1987
She’s very powerful. You accord this little old lady an almost hysterical ability to wreak havoc. The Sopranos s1e2: 46 Long starring James Gandolfini & Lorriane Bracco & Edie Falco & Michael Imperioli & Dominic Chianese & Steven van Zandt & Tony Sirico & Robert Iler et al, Dr Melfi, HBO 1999