Getting old we can deal with. Being old is the problem

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.

You know you’re getting old when everything aggravates you.

Getting old is fun when you're young. But getting old isn't so much fun when you're old.

What is it that is troubling you? You’re young, but your eyes are old.

What you learn as you get older is that the world is old, and has been old for a long time.

When you're younger, you think you have a handle on things. As you get older, you realize you don't

I am old now, or at least, I am no longer young, and everything I see reminds me of something else I’ve seen, such that I see nothing for the first time. A bonny girl, her hair fiery red, reminds me only of another hundred such lasses, and their mothers, and what they were as they grew, and what they looked like when they died. It is the curse of age, that all things are reflections of other things.

The problem with aging is not that it’s one damn thing after another—it’s every damn thing, all at once, all the time.
You can’t stop aging. Gene therapies and replacement organs and plastic surgery give it a good fight. But it catches up with you anyway. Get a new lung, and your heart blows a valve. Get a new heart, and your liver swells up to the size of an inflatable kiddie pool. Change out your liver, a stroke gives you a whack. That’s aging’s trump card; they still can’t replace brains.

Everyone hopes to reach old age but when it comes, most of us complain about it.

In youth, we run into difficulties. In old age, difficulties run into us.

That was the danger of being old and a politician. Habits outlived the situations that created them. Policies remained in place after the situations that inspired them had changed. The calculus of all human power was changing, and the models she used to make sense of it shifted with them, and she had to keep reminding herself that the past was a different place. She didn’t live there anymore.

that in itself age doesn’t make anyone better or wiser, but only accentuates what they have always been.

Yes, in our world, old thinking can be a stubborn thing. That's one of the reasons why we need term limits -- old people think old ways. […] The old ways can be stubborn. But I believe the human heart is stronger. I believe hearts can change. I believe minds can open. That’s how change happens. That’s how societies move forward. It's not always a straight line -- step by halting step -- sometimes you go forward, you move back a little bit. But I believe we are marching, we are pointing towards ideals of justice and equality.