Old Age Quotes in Middlesex

Now, don't tell Madonna that we said forty-one is old (she's way over that hill, but still rocks it like a twenty-year-old). What we're illustrating here is the whole with-age-comes-wisdom cliché. From Cal's forty-one-year-old vantage point, he can accept his youth, and make space for that part of his identity to become a part of him currently instead of hiding from it.

When you're an Old, you have to look back on your life and decide what to do with it. Do you accept it, or do you run from it?

Wow! Desdemona looks damn good for her age. Okay, she's being metaphorical here, but what is she talking about? Do her joints just really hurt, or is she thinking about the past and everything about her life and the lives that have come before her?

Milton wastes no time marginalizing Lefty as soon he gets control of the diner. It's both good and bad for Lefty—it gives him the freedom to revisit his youth, but he doesn't seem to bring his elderly wisdom with him, and ends up repeating old mistakes.

Okay, we mostly talk about old wrinkly people in this theme, but cities get old too. Countries get old. Ideas get old. Do you think that places go through the same sort of rebirth that people sometimes do as they get older?

Lefty kind of pulls a Curious Case of Benjamin Button here, mentally regressing into his youth. Do you think there's a physiological reason for doing this, or that it's one of those life-flashing-before-your-eyes things happening in slow motion?

Desdemona has a difficult time coping with, well, life in general when she gets to be as old as she is. (Late seventies, she says.) When you don't have any friends, and your husband is dead, how can you go on living?

Desdemona might just be the only link left to her village, which was practically eradicated by the Turks when she fled at the turn of the century. What knowledge will be lost when she finally dies?

People aren't the only things getting old—the planet is getting old, and human civilization is getting old together. Notice that Eugenides capitalizes Time here. (This stunt was performed by a trained professional, kids, so don't try it at home… unless you have a really good reason.) We're all getting old together, every day.

No, all old people aren't psychics like Sylvia Browne. We think what Cal is saying here is something akin to with age comes wisdom. Or more specifically, perspective. Growing old gives Cal the opportunity to be more empathetic, and to put himself into the shoes of his ancestors and see how they lived. We wouldn't have this book without that perspective.