Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always re...

I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death if I could not have one, I would have the other.

I grew up like a neglected weed - ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.

I had crossed the line. I was free but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land.

The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.

One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young.

My notion of a wife at 40 is that a man should be able to change her, like a bank note, for two 20s.

If you're old, don't try to change yourself, change your environment.

Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.

Everybody past a certain age, regardless of how they look on the outside, pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives.

People are so busy dreaming the American Dream, fantasizing about what they could be or have a right to be, that they're all asleep at the switch. Consequently we are living in the Age of Human Error.

Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.

How incessant and great are the ills with which a prolonged old age is replete.

Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long and the age of the great epics is past.

A final word: I am not knowledgeable about the internet. I do not have a computer. I guess that at 74 years of age, I don't have the patience to learn.

One problem with age is that patience begins to ebb.

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.

It's amazing. My kids have grown me in ways I never knew possible. The patience I've received and the love I get from them is just amazing.

Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength.

Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.

Brain power improves by brain use, just as our bodily strength grows with exercise. And there is no doubt that a large proportion of the female population, from school days to late middle age, now have very complicated lives indeed.

Old age is not a disease - it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses.