“That's what happens when you're thirty-seven years old: you do the things you always did but the result is somehow different.”

“Wow. You look…really nice today. Did you do something different?” Only a thirty-four-year-old virgin, I thought.”

“When a thing is told to you and you can't remember it happening it doesn't count somehow. It is as though it had nothing to do with you. Remembering, that's what counts.”

“It won't work,' Mr. Bentley continued, sipping his tea. 'No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you're nine, you think you've always been nine years old and will always be. When you're thirty, it seems you've always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seventy. You're in the present, you're trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen.”

“Inside every seventy-year-old is a thirty-five-year-old asking, 'What happened?”

“Just lie back, wench."She snickered. "Did you call me wench? Well, you certainly dated yourself there, didn't you? Sometimes I forget how old you are. What's your age, anyway? Thirty-seven? Thirty-eight?""I'm thirty-three.”