Source: Dandelion Wine (1957), p. 142
Context: “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Well.” She started pouring tea. “To start things off, what do you think of the world?”
“I don’t know anything.”
“The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you’re seventeen you know everything. When you’re twenty-seven if you still know everything you’re still seventeen.”
“You seem to have learned quite a lot over the years.”
“It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it’s an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn’t life a play? Don’t I play it well?”
They both laughed quietly.
