Dandelion Wine (Green Town, #1)

by Ray Bradbury

He realized that all men were like this; that each person was to himself one alone. One oneness, a unit in a society, but always afraid.

“It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it’s an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn’t life a play? Don’t I play it well?”

Ninety years gazed calmly out at her physicians like a dust-ghost from a high cupola window in a fast-emptying house.

“Some people turn sad awfully young,” he said. “No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I’m one of them.”