Donald Hall Quotes

I do not want to be 36 years old and can hardly walk.

I don't mind getting old except for the pain. I have two new knees, so going downstairs is not perfect. Nobody tells you about the pain.

One of the worst things about ageing is the waning of your physical powers. I live in a house with 64 stairs, and I cannot run up and down them any more; my knee has conked out.

I think the problems with being older come when your body cannot do what your mind wants. Then, Houston, we have a problem.

When I reached 80, my world turned upside down physically. I've had a lot of physical problems.

You get old, you slow down.

I always complain because I'm old now and everything hurts.

The appearance of aged persons is too well known to make detailed description necessary. The skin of the face is dry and wrinkled and generally pale. The hairs on the head and the body are white. The back is bent, and the gait is slow and laborious, whilst the memory is weak. Such are the most familiar traits of old age.

Quite often, while I'm getting up in the morning, I think my warranty is running out on these body parts because it's not working quite the way it used to.

As you get older, your body doesn't hold up as much.

It's one of the terrors of old age that your body is not your friend. Or to be out on the street and be frightened of someone because you're not in good shape and can't do anything about it.

Once you find you can't walk as far and as fast as you were able, life becomes more complicated.

Nobody ever said that growing old would be easy. Just having to hold the newspaper out in your forties and then hair growing out of unusual parts of your body in your fifties. It's tough on the ego.

At 60, the mind was sharp but the body complained. The legs were willing to make all the right moves but the muscles gave out too early.

It doesn't seem like it's been 50 years. I don't even feel like I'm 50 years old yet, though I've had all these knee and back operations.

At 49, I find it a little bit difficult to run these days. I've got grade four tears in both Achilles, shin splints, I got no cartilage the toes in my right foot, I've got bone marrow edemas under both knees, I've got one degenerating hip - that's the problem you get.

I have the problems of, I must confess, old age.

As I approach my 88th birthday, it's become apparent to me that my eyes and ears, among other appurtenances, aren't quite what they used to be. The prospect of long flights to wherever in search of whatever are not quite as appealing.

Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.

Old age is the supreme evil, for it deprives man of all pleasures while allowing his appetites to remain, and it brings with it every possible sorrow. Yet men fear death and desire old age.

My eyesight is not nearly as good. My hearing is probably going away. My memory is slipping too. But I'm still around.

There's not enough talked about in terms of growing older. You start to lose your body.

Old age is a wonderful time of life. At least, that's what everyone tells you. But let me tell you: it is not true. What's true is that your hips, knees and ankles gradually give up on you - everything is quite dreadful, really. And it was a terrible thing to have told us because we believed it.

When I hit 35, there were things I couldn't do which I'd done previously, and they had been completely natural to me.

It's when you get to 60 when everything starts to go pear-shaped. Everyone thinks that becoming an older guy is easy, but you never consider it fully. It comes as quite a shock.