“It was the period of my mental progress which I have now reached that I formed the friendship which has been the honour and chief blessing of my existence, as well as the source of a great part of all that I have attempted to do, or hope to effect hereafter, for human improvement. My first introduction to the lady who, after a friendship of twenty years, consented to become my wife, was in 1830, when I was in my twenty-fifth and she in her twenty-third year.”

“My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.”

“Dame Sancho would be better if she cared less. I am her barometer- if a sigh escapes me, it is answered by a tear in her eye; I oft assume a gaiety to illume her dear sensibility with a smile- which twenty years ago almost bewitched me; and mark! after twenty years enjoyment, constitutes my highest pleasure!”

“If I had my druthers I’d be twenty-three years old for the rest of my life. Which would last another three thousand years.”

“The first twenty years of my life were wasted…I didn't fit my environment, and I didn't know any other.”

“You are a concert pianist. That was my life when I was twenty-two years old.”

“He was twenty. I remembered twenty. I'd known everything at twenty. It took me another year to realize I knew nothing. I was still hoping to learn something before I hit thirty, but I wasn't holding my breath.”

“It really is the year 2007. Which means I must be…

Oh my God. I'm twenty-eight.

I'm old.”

“I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

“In 1939 I wrote my first article ('Intime banaliteter' [Intimate banalities] in the journal Helhesten) in which I expressed my love for sofa painting, and for the last twenty years I have been preoccupied with the idea of rendering homage to it. Thus I act with full responsibility and after extensive reflection. Only my current situation has enabled me to accomplish the expensive task of demonstrating that the preferred sustenance of painting is painting.”