There is no lonelier man in death except the suicide than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.
The '80s made up for all the abuse I took during the '70s. I outlived all my critics. By the time I retired everybody saw me as a venerable institution. Things do change.
A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress.
Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you and in this materialistic age a great many of us are possessed by our possessions.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
The openness of rural Nebraska certainly influenced me. That openness in a way fosters the imagination. But growing up Lincoln wasn't a small town. It was a college town. It had record stores and was a liberal place.