Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72.
I wasted the 1980s. I wasted every minute at Cambridge talking to people who knew more about music than I did.
In two years, I spent all my money on cars, watches, boots, discos, restaurants, and friends who, in reality, were not friends at all. For a boy like me, who grew up in a poor neighbourhood and without money, it was dangerous.
I shall be thirty-one next birthday. My youth is gone like a dream; and very little use have I ever made of it. What have I done these last thirty years? Precious little.
I've been sleeping through my life Now I'm waking up And I want to stand in the sunshine I have never been ecstatic Had a flower but it never bloomed In the darkness of my wasted youth It was hiding in the shadows Learning to become invisible Uncover me
I really hated school. I had the feeling I was losing a lot of time.
I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot to ask that they be years of youth.
For though the camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears.
I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.
A graceful and blessed old age must have three elements in it: a happy retrospect, a peaceful present, and an inspiring future. And old age cannot have either one of these three if the youth has been wasted and manhood has been misspent.
I was always too mature for my age - and not very happy. I had no young friends. I wish I could go back to those days. If I could only live it all again, how I would play and enjoy other girls. What a fool I was.
Anticipated rents, and bills unpaid, Force many a shining youth into the shade, Not to redeem his time, but his estate, And play the fool, but at the cheaper rate.
