Sitting by the chimney corner as we grow old, the commonest things around us take on live meanings and hint at the difference between these driving times and the calm, slow moving days when we were young.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
You can't be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning: 'Holy Christ, whaddya know - I'm still around!' It's absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career.
Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.
The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.
Look at pictures of me growing up. It wasn't always the way it is now. It was a bumpy road for me.
What's interesting to me is the distinction between my old life and my present life.
Not a living thing was to be seen and the cottages that sat huddled close to the ground remained fast shut; the smoke from the chimneys alone still gave a sign of life.
As you get older, time speeds up but life slows down.
The doors between the old man today and the child are still open, wide open. I can stroll through my grandmother's house and know exactly where the pictures are, the furniture was, how it looked, the voice, the smells. I can move from my bed at night today to my childhood in less than a second.
Age is not different from earlier life as long as you're sitting down.
One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.