Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.
Prodigality of Time produces Poverty of Mind as well as of Estate.
I must admit I am nervous about getting Alzheimer's. Once it hits, I might tell my best joke and never know it.
But I'm not as bad as Al Pacino - he doesn't even know what month it is half the time when he's working.
Age carries all things away, even the mind.
There is two different Donald Trumps. There is the Donald Trump of the '90s... Now you've got this other one. The post-dementia Donald Trump who just loves picking fights because, I think, he's a lonely man.
Once the pathological low self-esteem goes, that's when things go downhill.
Years steal fire from the mind as vigor from the limb; and life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.
I don't fear death so much as I fear its prologues: loneliness, decrepitude, pain, debilitation, depression, senility. After a few years of those, I imagine death presents like a holiday at the beach.
Some things get better with age, but after a certain point, the mind isn't among them.
One problem with age is that patience begins to ebb.
My mother had very poor hearing for many years, until she went basically into - I guess I would call it a psychotic break. She was OK one day, and the next day she was completely cuckoo, violent, paranoid.
You know, I have found a new way to get high and stay spaced out for hours on end, and the government can't stop me... It's called senility.
Maybe the memory does play tricks. Increasingly, I'm thinking, 'What was their name? I knew that name yesterday.' I think that's what happens. At some point, I'll forget that I ever worked with Peter Cook, I suppose, and Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller.
A terrible depression yesterday. Visions of my life petering out into a kind of soft-brained stupor from lack of use.
I think middle-age is the best time, if we can escape the fatty degeneration of the conscience which often sets in at about fifty.
What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.
I'll die a crazy old man!
Why are people afraid of getting older? You feel wiser. You feel more mature. You feel like you know yourself better. You would trade that for softer skin? Not me!
I get dumber as the day goes along. Every second of the day that goes along, I get stupider.
My father started growing very quiet as Alzheimer's started claiming more of him. The early stages of Alzheimer's are the hardest because that person is aware that they're losing awareness. And I think that that's why my father started growing more and more quiet.
My mind still wants to do everything; my body can't anymore. My mind would want to continue until I was 100.
If a brain is exercised properly, anyone can grow intelligence, at any age, and potentially by a lot. Or you can just let your brain idle - and watch it slowly, inexorably, go to seed like a sedentary body.
A lot of people like me, who've been around for years and years and years, only really lose it in their forties and fifties.
Mike Webster lost all his money or, maybe, gave it away. He forgot. A lot of lawsuits. Mike Webster forgot how to eat, too. Soon, Mike Webster was homeless, living in a truck, one of its windows replaced with a garbage bag and tape.
