“What were the living dead, Wolgast thought, but a metaphor for the misbegotten march of middle age?”

“It was what you did, Wolgast understood; you started to tell a story about who you were, and soon enough the lies were all you had and you became that person.”

“Death was silence, loss, guilt. And anger. But life led that way, anyway. From birth, it was a slow, long march to the grave. Who said that? She couldn’t remember now. But it was true. They were born dying. If they were very lucky, the dying was called aging. They reached toward if as if they were satellites in unstable orbits. And then when they got there, they were just dead. One moment in time separated the living from the ghosts.”

“In Paris, women were not considered interesting until they were middle-aged. The Mist of Montmartre”

“Metaphors were so bloody: people shot messengers,, flogged dead horses, cut the throats of their competitors. Perhaps that was life; perhaps that's what it was really like.”

“Too much thought is bad for the soul, for art, and for crime. It is also a sign of middle age.”