phantom-thought

The only answer to the malice of time is to do what the pupil should have done to the beans. He should have eaten them, just as we should eat all our tomorrows, savour them, roll them around on our tongues, get every last bit of goodness out of them, and every last bit of pain, too, every sensation we can. You’ll get old, we’ll all get old, but there’s a world a difference between the sprightly seventy-year-old with sparking eyes who can still change his mind about almost anything and is still fond of whoopee cushions, and the middle-aged person with eyes like a dead halibut who thinks the world’s gone to pot and no one writes good tunes any more.