“Thirty-one.
Not old.
Not young.
But a viable die-able age.”
Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things
The God of Small Things (1997)
“Few of them made it to thirty.
Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.”
"Our Ancestors' Short Lives"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)
Context: Few of them made it to thirty.
Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.
Childhood ended as fast as wolf cubs grow.
One had to hurry, to get on with life
before the sun went down,
before the first snow.
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Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees." by Wisława Szymborska?
Wisława Szymborska92
Polish writer 1923–2012Related quotes
“They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet
Directive (1947)
Context: p>As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.</p
“Ageing is a privilege not a predicament”
Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist
Quoted by Caitlin Moran in The Times (18 June 2007).
C. J. Cherryh book The Dreamstone
The Dreamstone, Book One : The Gruagach, Ch. 1 : Of Fish and Fire
Arafel's Saga (1983)
William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist
On Art And Artists (1800) 'On the Foundation of the Royal Academy'
1800s
“If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age.”
George Burns (1896–1996) American comedian, actor, and writer
“The history of the world is the history of a privileged few.”
Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist
Sunday after the war (1944), pub. New Directions.
Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography
Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 2
Context: At the age of thirty, or thereabouts, this young Nobleman had not only had every experience that life has to offer, but had seen the worthlessness of them all. Love and ambition, women and poets were all equally vain. Literature was a farce. The night after reading Greene's Visit to a Nobleman in the Country, he burnt in a great conflagration fifty-seven poetical works, only retaining 'The Oak Tree', which was his boyish dream and very short. Two things alone remained to him in which he now put any trust: dogs and nature; an elk-hound and a rose bush. The world, in all its variety, life in all its complexity, had shrunk to that. Dogs and a bush were the whole of it.
