One of the worst things I’ve learned about getting older is that there seems to be more change that you don’t like than there was when you were younger and you can’t do nothin’ about it.

Now, it’s time for me to lock up and go. Listen to me. Lock up an empty building that’s gonna be torn down. Makes no sense. Like an old man tellin’ a lie to his son from his death bed. What’s the point? Who besides yourself are you fooling?

His mind has become a refuge for old thoughts, idle, indigent, with nowhere else to go. He ought to chase them out, sweep the premises clean. But he does not care to do so, or does not care enough"(72).

Old age is always 15 years older than I am.

I had always been a boy in this place, and many of the trees and rocks and streams had been old men when I knew them. Some had died. All had changed. I knew that. I had changed the most.

It is not well to make great changes in old age.