“The idea of my own advancing age has never particularly bothered me, perhaps because my youthful years were much less enjoyable than the time I have now. But today, prompted by some new ache or wrinkle, my mind glanced onto the subject, and I was briefly invaded by a curious feeling. It was the same sort of mood that is cultivated by writers of thrillers, experienced by heroes who, early in the story, are knocked out or drugged, and awake to find themselves in wholly unfamiliar places, damp moldering cellars or drab rooms whose barred windows look out on alien courtyards, far from where the heroes’ friends or colleagues expect them to be, far from where they or anyone would want to be. They feel dismay, confusion and impotent anger, and these were what I momentarily felt; but in my case the feeling did not concern place but rather time. I felt stranded in my forties, a young spirit in a withering body. For a few instants I refused to acknowledge my body as my own, denied the connection between awareness and the protoplasm from which it springs. It was not until later that I realized taht this refusal, this anger, was the real crux of aging: that the pain of growing old lies specifically in the fact taht part of us does not grow old.”

Robert Grudin, Time And The Art Of Living (Page 113)