"You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to makes such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person I thought it was your secret pride."

"I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor."

She didn't answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.

I’d tell them how old I was, they’d stare at me and say, “You’re that old?” I was thirty. An old man in Fallujah.

Why were you so old when we met? I answered with the truth: Age isn't how old you are but how old you feel.

spent hours apart by myself, taking stock of where I stood, mentally, on this my thirtieth birthday. It came to me queerly how, four years ago, I had meant to be a general and knighted, when thirty.

I spent hours apart by myself, taking stock of where I stood, mentally, on this my thirtieth birthday. It came to me queerly how, four years ago, I had meant to be a general and knighted, when thirty. Such temporal dignities were now in my grasp, only that my sense of falsity of the Arab position had cured me of crude ambition: while it left me craving for good repute among men. This craving made me profoundly suspect my truthfulness to myself. Only too good an actor could so impress his favorable opinion. Here were the Arabs believing me, Allenby and Clayton trusting me, my bodyguard dying for me: and I began to wonder if all established reputations were founded, like mine, on fraud.

The habit of speaking apologetically of one’s self as “being old” merely because one has reached the age of forty, or fifty, instead of reversing the rule and expressing gratitude for having reached the age of wisdom and understanding.

Je commence à avoir trente ans, et je perds le talent de vivre.

When I was young, I was 13 going on 31. Then when I was 30 going on 31, I was 30 going on 29. Now I’m in love and I’ve lost all sense of time — and all the rest of my sense.

I wish I'd been a Hell-raiser when I was 30 years old. I tried when I was 50 but I always got sleepy.

I feel like I’m late for love. I’ll be 30 in March. Damn it! I knew I should have set my alarm clock.

I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now.

From the back pages

But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.

"I had a lack of confidence, which caused me to back down from forcefully stated positions; an i was overly emotional at the expense of careful, "scientific" thought. I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was"

If I ever thought of myself as a man of thirty-five it was a visualization of dreary decrepitude.