There are a lot of downsides to being male. We age faster and die younger. But give us this: we're lifetime baby-making machines. Women's reproductive abilities start to wane when they're as young as 35. Men? We're good to go pretty much till we're dead.

Older fatherhood isn't all bad: testosterone rates drop about 1% per year as men age, making them less reactive and more patient, and a professionally established middle-aged man is likely to have more time and money to devote to his kids than a twenty-something who's just getting started.

Credit or debit cards, for starters, are nothing short of shoppers' Novocain. Even in the age of digital purchases and virtual money, we still attach a special value to dirty paper with pictures of presidents on it. Handing some of that to a cashier simply hurts more than handing over a little sliver of plastic.

When it comes to raising civilized kids there are no hard rules, but there are two things on which most parents agree: Boys are generally wilder than girls, and adolescents are wilder than kids of any other age. If you've got an adolescent boy, you're in the sweet spot for trouble.

It seems to me there is a change in what audiences want to see. I can only hope that's correct, because there's an awful lot of people of my age around now and we outnumber the others.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

In Hollywood, you play a mom, and the next thing you know, you're on 'The Golden Girls.' They age you so fast.

A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.

I can't get my knickers in a twist about my age and ageing in an industry that caters to the ids of 14-year-olds.

I was living on the wrong side of the tracks in Evanston, Illinois, in a home for boys. We had these Jackson 5 records. I really related to their voices - they were about my age, but they were doing it.