When I was a kid, we would build pillow forts. My pillow fort was always like Ice Station 9 in Antarctica. The other kids would come by and be like, 'Oh! The wind and snow is blowing.' From a young age, I wanted to be out there and surviving. I'm a high-strung, hyperactive guy.
I had been writing poems and stories since I learned to make letters. I had placed poems in a hardcover anthology at the age of 6. And I knew more big words than anyone else in the 10th grade.
Eschatological fears are an ancient human concern. The Romans expected the world to end in 634 B.C. owing to a prophecy involving twelve eagles, while the early Christians anticipated the Final Judgment in their own lifetimes. Pope Sylvester II thought A.D. 1000 would be the last year, a view updated for the modern age by the Millennium bug.
Religion is the best antidote to the individualism of the consumer age. The idea that society can do without it flies in the face of history and, now, evolutionary biology.
We haven't lost romance in the digital age, but we may be neglecting it. In doing so, antiquated art forms are taking on new importance. The power of a handwritten letter is greater than ever. It's personal and deliberate and means more than an e-mail or text ever will.
I grew up in the prolonged survival of the great age of the horse, with harness and saddle and sleigh bells and horse pictures, not as antiques but the facts of our lives.
It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.
To my mind, there is no doubt that this Gandhi age is the dark age of India. It is an age in which people, instead of looking for their ideals in the future, are returning to antiquity.
Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today's job with yesterday's tools and yesterday's concepts.
Now is the age of anxiety.
At an early age, my mother gave me this feeling that anything is possible, and I believe that.
My natural hair is jet black. I used to have it down to my bum. And I went through a phase of being obsessed with fake tan. So from the age of 14 to 16, I looked like an Apache Indian!
Think back to yourself at age 18. I know I was mighty different than the Patti I am today. As we grow up, we grow out of our haircuts, our apartments and - often times - our romantic decisions.
There's also some element of coming of age during the Reagan administration, which everybody has painted as some glorious time in America, but I remember as being a very, very dark time. There was apocalypse in the air; the punk rock movement made sense.
'Apocalypse Now' was my craziest experience ever. I was 14 years old, and I'd lied about my age to get the role. I haven't had another film top it.
If you read back in the Bible, the letter of the apostle Paul to the church of Thessalonia, he said that in the latter days before the end of the age that the Earth would be caught up in what he called the birth pangs of a new order.
The Church, during the apostolic age, did not consist of isolated, independent congregations, but was one body, of which the separate churches were constituent members, each subject to all the rest, or to an authority which extended over all.
I remember burying a girl fourteen years of age who had died with a ruptured appendix... I buried a good many people that I knew, some of whom I loved.
Old age is the supreme evil, for it deprives man of all pleasures while allowing his appetites to remain, and it brings with it every possible sorrow. Yet men fear death and desire old age.
With age comes the understanding and appreciation of your most important asset, your health.
