Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.

It's art that pushes against psychological and social expectations that tries to transform decay into something generative that is replicative in a baroque way that isn't about progress and wants to - as Walt Whitman put it - 'contain multitudes.'

In a decaying society art if it is truthful must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

Writers may be disreputable incorrigible early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.

Age is not all decay it is the ripening the swelling of the fresh life within that withers and bursts the husk.

Middle age is youth without levity and age without decay.

A comfortable old age is the reward of a well-spent youth. Instead of its bringing sad and melancholy prospects of decay it would give us hopes of eternal youth in a better world.