Age Difference Quotes

“I’m rough with your body sometimes, but I’ll always be gentle with your soul. She bruises far more easily.”
― Brianna Hale, Control Freak

“There was a considerable difference between the ages of my parents, but this circumstance seemed to unite them only closer in bonds of devoted affection. There was a sense of justice in my father’s upright mind, which rendered it necessary that he should approve highly to love strongly. Perhaps during former years he had suffered from the late-discovered unworthiness of one beloved, and so was disposed to set a greater value on tried worth. There was a show of gratitude and worship in his attachment to my mother, differing wholly from the doting fondness of age, for it was inspired by reverence for her virtues, and a desire to be the means of, in some degree, recompensing her for the sorrows she had endured, but which gave inexpressible grace to his behaviour to her. Everything was made to yield to her wishes and her convenience. He strove to shelter her, as a fair exotic is sheltered by the gardener, from every rougher wind, and to surround her with all that could tend to excite pleasurable emotion in her soft and benevolent mind.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

“The pristine vision of childhood restores freshness to even the most time-worn scenes, and in Laura’s company I recovered some of the delights I had experienced years ago when my son was a little boy.”
― Romain Gary, Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable

“— When a man close to sixty decides to break with a young woman whom he loves, and who loves him, what would you call it?
— Damned stupidity, sir.
— Yes, damned stupidity; in other words, ‘good sense’.”
― Romain Gary, Au-delà de cette limite votre ticket n'est plus valable

“She remained stiff against him. “It’s a nasty little piece that speculates on the unions of older women and younger men. There is a mocking paragraph on how wise a man like you must be to reap the benefits of an older woman’s ‘grateful enthusiasm.’ It’s a completely dreadful article, and it makes me sound like a lust-crazed old crone who has managed to ensnare a young man for stud service. Now, tell me at once if there is any truth in it!”

One would have wished for immediate denial.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Suddenly You

“It's bizarre how we compliment eachother by saying "You look younger than what you are". I mean, can't we just be proud of our age and not constantly at war with a natural phenomenon?”
― Torron-Lee Dewar

“Every age and stage of life has its jokes (usually laughing at other age groups and one’s own), its way of doing things, and its benefits.”
― Donna Goddard, Nanima: Spiritual Fiction

“Oh, Prince Rui, what is this? Why do you look so fragile?” Prince Zhong stood at the gates of the palace, and called out to Prince Rui. He bowed to Prince Rui with a smile. “When one gets old, you have to take care, and not get old ahead of your time.”

“Thank you, Prince Zhong, for your reminder. This prince is a few years younger than you, and does not have much experience.”
― Yue Xia Die Ying, 如珠似玉 Like Pearl and Jade

“I must have forgotten how young you would be, Princess. Has there ever been a sovereign of such tender age?"
Jasmine paused. He might have been simply making idle conversation, or maybe this was his way of paying her a compliment, but she had a feeling it was something else. He was sizing her up, and he didn't see a leader.
"Perhaps you also forgot the boy king of Egypt," she said, keeping her tone sweet as honey. "I am eighteen--- ten years older than Tutankhamun was."
"Ah, yes. Of course.”
― Alexandra Monir, Realm of Wonders

“I didn't want him to see me cry, on top of it all. How much younger I'd seem then--too young. From the beginning, I wanted us to be equals, I wanted to know all the things he knew--an impossible wish, but a true one.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“Later, I would ask Jude what he was doing on the beach that day when he found me all stung up on the shore.
Looking for you, he said.
And why were you looking for me?
The narrative would change, depending on the mood. Somethings it was, Because I wanted to fuck you, his hand sliding up my leg, beneath my dress, reaching for my underwear. I found language like that blunt and crude and yet it thrilled me.
But mostly the answer was, I wanted to talk with you.
And why did you want to talk with me?
Always the beggar for his love. I was like the desperate ocean, wearing away at him. The ceaseless questioning of the tide to the shore that I heard from our bedroom window all winter long. Asking, Do you love me? Do you love me?
And his answer, which never quite satisfied: If I didn't, would I still be here in bed with you?”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“Did you think anything would happen between us?
Never expected you'd be so bold, he said.
I've never done anything like that before, I said. Nothing like this has ever happened to me.
Me neither, he said, and it felt like a victory--to give him something new.
But then I remembered all those years between us, a gap wide enough to fall into. Eighteen years--a whole adolescence, a coming of age.
It's really true for me, I insisted. I wish you could fall in love for the first time again. Or that you'd never loved anybody else before me and neither had I.
He laughed and said, Oh, trust me. I was a pretty shitty boyfriend. And anyway, every time is like the first time. That's the beauty of love. It erases.
I didn't know the violence of it then--the erasure.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“Did you think anything would happen between us?

Never expected you'd be so bold, he said.

I've never done anything like that before, I said. Nothing like this has ever happened to me.

Me neither, he said, and it felt like a victory--to give him something new.

But then I remembered all those years between us, a gap wide enough to fall into. Eighteen years--a whole adolescence, a coming of age.

It's really true for me, I insisted. I wish you could fall in love for the first time again. Or that you'd never loved anybody else before me and neither had I.

He laughed and said, Oh, trust me. I was a pretty shitty boyfriend. And anyway, every time is like the first time. That's the beauty of love. It erases.

I didn't know the violence of it then--the erasure.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“Later, I would ask Jude what he was doing on the beach that day when he found me all stung up on the shore.

Looking for you, he said.

And why were you looking for me?

The narrative would change, depending on the mood. Somethings it was, Because I wanted to fuck you, his hand sliding up my leg, beneath my dress, reaching for my underwear. I found language like that blunt and crude and yet it thrilled me.

But mostly the answer was, I wanted to talk with you.

And why did you want to talk with me?

Always the beggar for his love. I was like the desperate ocean, wearing away at him. The ceaseless questioning of the tide to the shore that I heard from our bedroom window all winter long. Asking, Do you love me? Do you love me?

And his answer, which never quite satisfied: If I didn't, would I still be here in bed with you?”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“Our afternoons were stolen time, precious to me, and I maintained my old superstition that if I spoke about what I loved, it would somehow be taken from me. I wanted to keep it close inside, this feeling, to be turned over and examined only in private, at least until--until what? What was I waiting for, perched on the edge of his bed? Some confirmation that it might be something more. Always wary because I sensed my capacity for loving was bottomless.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“You calling me old?

It became another game between us. I would shake my head and say, No. By then I knew all the ways to make him feel young. And maybe I liked it -- reading him the menus in dimly lit restaurants on the few real dates we bothered with. It felt good that he needed me for something, that there were things I had over him too--like my twenty-twenty vision, and time. Although time, as Jude liked to say, time is on nobody's side.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“I know how it is, he said, his tone shifting. Voice warm and low. Intimate again. You like it this way. Sneaking around.

And it seemed to me he was offering a way out, and so I shrugged, nodded.

Say nothing more, he said, reaching for me. Saved from having to explain, I kissed him to stop talk, to stop thought.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“But as we learn to trust, we take more risks.

He touched me with what I can only think to describe as authority--so different from my sexual experiences so far, those incoherent collegiate rumblings.

Jude turned to me, rolling onto his side. He brushed the sand from my cheek and said, Sleep with me tonight.

I thought I just did.

I don't mean fucking, he said, and I marveled at the word in his mouth--not a curse or a blunt force but somehow spoken with lightness, worn in with the warmth of many years.

I mean come home with me. Spend the night. I want to be able to reach for you.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“I was surprised by the realization that even if he was not reliable in the way that I'd imagined, I did not desire him any less. I could see for the first time how it might feel good to make mistakes with someone, sway together, embrace the drift. And maybe I sensed it, wanted it then. The ways we might either break each other in or burn each other up.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“I had longed for this. To fall asleep in his warmth, to feel that our time together for once was unlimited.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“Who is to say what love is or what it wants to be, the shape it takes, or how quickly it comes on? Love has always made a fool of time.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“In his absence, I imagined the house had revealed something about Jude's true nature--private, and unyielding in all the places I'd thought he was inviting me in.

You're quiet tonight, my mother said.

With the wine in my blood, I could have told her about it t hen. Bold enough and wanting, suddenly, a witness. But what words would I use to describe to my mother what we did together? Did not have the language for it. Could not look her in the eye and call it love.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“I looked around the cabin--its white walls, the linen curtains that puffed in the breeze like sails, paintings of boats and nautical knots. This place, I knew, would not remember me. Already, most traces of my presence had been swept away and scrubbed clean. But what about Jude? I wanted to stain him, like pollen Wanted to press into his skin, Remember me here.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“Jude, I would learn, needed not to feel bound to anyone--love with a loose leash. To return not out of obligation but of his own free will, and for me to trust that he would. To Jude, that was love. That trust. He needed my faith in him in order to feel free.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“It never occurred to me that I could hurt him, that even a grown man might have a heart still raw in places.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“But I could see it, behind his eyes. Some hurt there. It had never occurred to me that I could hurt him, that even a grown man might have a heart still raw in places.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“It's just one of those things. You know how it is.

And of course I didn't, not really, but I nodded along with him because I wanted to seem like a woman who knew something about love and its casualties--and maybe I did. Thinking of my mother and how she would always love my father, no matter how many men and houses and children now separated her from him. She'd remained loyal in her own way. In all that time she'd never remarried. As if she were still waiting for him like a teenager twenty years later, hoping for him to bring roses to her door, to take it all back. How many flowers would that take? There didn't seem to be enough in all the world.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“And I get it, you know, from his perspective. Younger girls demand less--or at least, they demand different sorts of things. It's like how you might get a puppy, to keep an old dog young.

Gee, thanks, I said. That's hardly a flattering comparison, is it?

But what's in it of you?

He's steady, I said.

Steady is good.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“I once asked my mother why she'd loved my father, and if she'd truly loved him, why she had left. He was my twin, she said. As if that were all the explanation needed to answer both questions.

Jude was not my twin. We were not two mirrors. We did not dress alike, could not be easily confused for brother and sister -- though we got looks sometimes, in restaurants. Waitresses trying to guess the dynamic. Father and daughter? Lovers? A student and professor with an inappropriate relationship?”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

“There was a kind of thrill or novelty for me at first in the difference between our ages. It was new, and I wanted to dwell in it, this way of living that might provoke curiosity or judgment from other people. With Jude, I was visible in a way I never had been before. I didn't feel shame around this but I sensed or feared that he did, and so I teased. Quick to make those jokes before anyone else could.”
― Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt