Ellen Goodman Quotes

I had to have experience, you know what I mean? Because I've been doing this since I was 14... I couldn't write about anything at 14. I had to live some life. I definitely lived some life.

I don't know if it's that the scripts are evolving or just that I'm getting older, but the characters become more interesting as you get older because you've lived more life at different stages. You've loved; you've lost; you have more of that journey.

My advice would be not to write until after 35. You need some experience, and for life to knock you about a bit. Growing up is so hard you probably won't have much emotion to spare anyway.

At the age of 60, I am less experimental and more mature. I want most of all to convey my understanding of life.

As an actor, I'm not sure what I had to offer the world of tragedy and comedy when I was 21. I hadn't lived a whole lot. By my middle 30s, you know, I had been knocked around a little bit.

I needed time to stand back and go through a lot more experience in life. Then I have something to write about, joke or to animate.

I think it just has to do with getting older and getting better at what it was I was doing, and that I could take something small and kind of take my time with it. I think actually what that has to do with is I quit drinking. Before that I told myself I could only drink if I was - if I was writing, I had to be drinking. So I was on a timer, because eventually you get too drunk to write.

I also think within the scene, a specific scene - if I were to play a part that I played 10 years ago now, my interpretation of that scene would be totally different. I would be making different choices. Because I can't somehow subtract all of the experiences that I've had in my life. And it's fascinating to see, because somewhere I'm very reflective in that. You know, I've been playing basically actually close to 40 years old, so I'm somewhere lost in age in this movie. But it's been fascinating to see that I can't subtract that time.

People seemed to think, you get to a certain age or you get married or you, you're comfortable. And so now there's nothing to write about: that angst is gone. The youthful angst. And that just hasn't happened with me.

One wouldn't want to have the same dilemmas at 50 as one had at 15. And indeed I don't. I have a very different take on life.

People mature with age and experience. I hope I more resemble a fine wine than bad vinegar.

I've done a lot of growing up since the age of 16 and I really wanted that to be reflected in my music.

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

Whether it's 18 years old or 40 years old, we think we know what's going on. But if you're lucky enough to continue the journey, its amazing how we keep learning how much we didn't know.

And if you don't live, you have nothing to write about.

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.

Think back to yourself at age 18. I know I was mighty different than the Patti I am today. As we grow up, we grow out of our haircuts, our apartments and - often times - our romantic decisions.

Maybe something that's acceptable in your teens or 20s is unacceptable in your 30s or 40s.

You can't predict the number of years it will take for someone to find themselves, to mature into their own voice. When I got to be 30, I was finally writing like Danny Brown.

I didn't get on TV until I was 30, which is really fortunate because you are who you are at that point.

The real problem is that there's a tendency to associate ageing with loss and decline and things that aren't desirable. But experiencing all that there is to experience in life - whether that's at the age of ten or thirty or fifty or eighty - is what life is all about.

When I turned 45, I lay in bed reflecting on all life had taught me. My soul sprang a leak and ideas flowed out. My pen simply caught them and set the words on paper. I typed them up and turned them into a newspaper column of the 45 lessons life taught me. When I hit 50, I added five more lessons and the paper ran the column again.

I want to write about grown-up things.

Since puberty I've always had this strange awareness that all the keener experiences I would have in my life would happen later than it would to my contemporaries. When it came to the career thing, I never worried about it. It's better if you're still peaking when you're 60, which I feel I am.

I'm an old man of 73, and I've been around a long time. If I don't know something by now, I probably never will.