“When you are old, you become invisible: in a waiting room, everyone in line, a young girl enters looking for someone. She looks around and when she reaches you, she passes by as if you are a post on the highway. That’s when the aging begins. [...] When someone stops working, their life is shaken: time loses its counterbalance, its support, its opponent, and its limit.

Once you pass eighty, they say: "You’re doing great, you look young." Sweet words for whoever says them, but for the one who hears them, they open the whirlpool of time where he sinks as if he fell into quicksand. The elderly move in darkness, with the silent steps of symptoms, trained groups of destruction that bring forth the unexpected, unwelcome, and increasing resemblance to strangers.

With a jab in the kidneys or with the weakening of hearing, even the enemy becomes a relative. Space and things dull: the elderly resemble gypsies, living on charity. [...] In autumn, when the flowers lower their heads, I cut them (and of course I am not the only one who does this) and then I secretly put them in my pockets, to hide the 'indecency' of the impending end.” Reflections on aging by a great Italian publisher.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]