It can never be again! Everyone always talks about a good thing coming to an end, as if life was over. But I'll be 40 when this interview comes out. Paul is 38. Elton John, Bob Dylan — we're all relatively young people. The game isn't over yet. Everyone talks in terms of the last record or the last Beatle concert — but, God willing, there are another 40 years of productivity to go. I'm not judging whether "I Am The Walrus" is better or worse than "Imagine." It is for others to judge. I am doing it. I do. I don't stand back and judge — I do.

"I am old, Peter. I am ever so much more than twenty. I grew up long ago." "You promised not to!" "I couldn't help it. I am a married woman, Peter."

Hi, I'm Patrick Stump. And I'm wearing Pete's pants.

I have often argued that a poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. I begin to suspect that there may be some truth in it.

I’d tell them how old I was, they’d stare at me and say, “You’re that old?” I was thirty. An old man in Fallujah.

I’m thirty,” I said. “I’m five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor

I get a kick out of people thinking I'm a very young fellow. They tell me, "You can play 10 more years." Yeah, I can play 10 more bad years.

Patrick’s a very prolific writer. He’s a one-of-a-kind kind of guy. You’ve got to let him do his thing. You don’t want to get too up in his grill, sort of speak.

Forty-two. His age had astounded him for years, and each time that he had sat so astounded, trying to figure out what had become of the young, slim man in his twenties, a whole additional year slipped by and had to be recorded, a continually growing sum which he could not reconcile with his self-image. He still saw himself, in his mind's eye, as youthful, and when he caught sight of himself in photographs he usually collapsed ... Somebody took my actual physical presence away and substituted this, he had thought from time to time. Oh well, so it went.

Forty-two. His age had astounded him for years, and each time that he had sat so astounded, trying to figure out what had become of the young, slim man in his twenties, a whole additional year slipped by and had to be recorded, a continually growing sum which he could not reconcile with his self-image. He still saw himself, in his mind's eye, as youthful, and when he caught sight of himself in photographs he usually collapsed <nowiki>...</nowiki> Somebody took my actual physical presence away and substituted this, he had thought from time to time. Oh well, so it went.

He is young but he thinks old.

He was thirty-two. Not old — but he felt old. His body, whatever its mutant mental powers, was physically weak. Every star! Every star he could see — and every star he couldn't see. It must all be his! Revenge on all. On a humanity of which he wasn't a part. On a Galaxy in which he didn't fit.

Thirty — the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.

'It's rather like a Poe story, isn't it,' said Patrick luxuriously, unfocusing his eyes. 'A person sees the chance of a better life passing by, and he makes as if to call out' - he flung one arm in the imploring gesture of a soul in torment - 'but something in his nature makes him hesitate. He pauses ... he closes his lips ... he steps back ... and then he slides down, and down, and down.'