“When I started school I thought that people in sixth class were so oldand knowledgeable even though they were no older than twelve. When Ireached twelve I reckoned the people in sixth year, at eighteen years of age,must have known it all. When I reached eighteen I thought that once I finishedcollege then I would really be mature. At twenty-five I still hadn’t madeit to college, was still clueless and had a seven-year-old daughter. I was convinced that when I reached my thirties I was going to have at least some clue as to what was going on.Nope, hasn’t happened yet.So I’m beginning to think that when I’m fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty,ninety years old I still won’t be any closer to being wise and knowledgeable.Perhaps people on their deathbed, who have had long, long lives, seen it all,traveled the world, have had kids, been through their own personal traumas,beaten their demons, and learned the harsh lessons of life will be thinking,“God, people in heaven must really know it all.”But I bet that when they finally do die they’ll join the rest of the crowdsup there, sit around, spying on the loved ones they left behind and still bethinking that in their next lifetime, they’ll have it all sussed.But I think I have it sussed Steph, I’ve sat around for years thinkingabout it and I’ve discovered that no one, not even the big man upstairs hasthe slightest clue as to what’s going on.”

“The truth is, part of me is every age. I’m a three-year-old, I’m a five-year-old, I’m a thirty-seven-year-old, I’m a fifty-year-old. I’ve been through all of them, and I know what it’s like. I delight in being a child when it’s appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man when it’s appropriate to be a wise old man. Think of all I can be! I am every age, up to my own.”

“I have been in love with painting ever since I became conscious of it at the age of six. I drew some pictures I thought fairly good when I was fifty, but really nothing I did before the age of seventy was of any value at all. At seventy-three I have at last caught every aspect of nature–birds, fish, animals, insects, trees, grasses, all. When I am eighty I shall have developed still further and I will really master the secrets of art at ninety. When I reach a hundred my work will be truly sublime and my final goal will be attained around the age of one hundred and ten, when every line and dot I draw will be imbued with life. - from Hokusai’s ‘The Art Crazy Old Man”

“What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; and yet ... I thought when I began, and still think, that there was another angle in all those years when she was growing old and older and very old, and Grandfather was matching her year for year, a separate line that did not intersect with hers. They were vertical people, they lived by pride, and it is only by the ocular illusion of perspective that they can be said to have met. But he had not been dead two months when she lay down and died too, and that may indicate that at that absolute vanishing point they did intersect. They had intersected for years, for more than he especially would ever admit.”

“I always think that I’m still this 13-year old boy that doesn’t really know how to be an adult, pretending to live my life, taking notes for when I’ll really have to do it.”

“As for myself, the part of me that still believes that I was given up because there was something wrong with me will diminish with the passage of time. But I feel sad when I think about all those years of not really knowing the truth. Would it have made me feel better about myself if I had known my story? Or would it still have taken me this long to understand what it all meant?”