Someone said "I see you celebrated your birthday yesterday". "No", I said, gracelessly, "I HAD a birthday yesterday; there was nothing celebratory about it".

It’s true. I do not take birthdays lying down. I hate them.

It’s hard to say at what age you reach the top of the hill and start down the back side. You reach the top physically and start downhill much sooner than you reach your intellectual peak. Or, at least that’s what people my age like to believe because evidence of our physical deterioration is evident to everyone while any mental decline that takes place is not so apparent. [...]

There has always been propaganda in favor of the idea that wisdom comes with age but you can bet no one young started the rumor. [...] If the young person makes the mathematical calculations quicker, the old one says he understands what they mean better. At my age I take the position he’s right. Old people shouldn’t let young people take the world away from them.

I look back, with some satisfaction, on what an idiot I was when I was 25. When I do that, I’m assuming I no longer am one. Were I to live another 80 years, I’m sure I’d look back at 2003 and wonder how I could have been so stupid way back then.