Any attempts at autobiography before the age of eighty seem pretty self-involved to me. There are a lot of smart middle aged people but not many wise ones.

Even the hard times are part of your life story. If you acknowledge them and move past them, they eventually add up to the experience that makes you wise.

When you're young, you don't have any experience-you're charged up, but you're out of control. And if you're old and you're not charged up, then all you have is memories. But if you're charged and stimulated by what's going on around you, and you also have experience, you know what to appreciate and what to pass by.

As I get older, I get smaller. I see other parts of the world I didn't see before. Other points of view. I see outside myself more.

My opportunities were still there, nay, they multiplied tenfold; but the strength and youth to cope with them began to fail, and to need eking out with the shifty cunning of experience.

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.