The child thinks of growing old as an almost obscene calamity, which for some mysterious reason will never happen to itself. All who have passed the age of thirty five are joyless grotesques, endlessly fussing about things of no importance and staying alive without, so far as the child can see, having anything to live for. Only child life is real life.

George Orwell (1903–1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]

Essay (1948-06), “‘Such, Such Were the Joys …’,” Partisan Review (1952-09)
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This autobiographical essay was drafted around 1939, revised around 1946, and then completed in May or June of 1948. Collected in Such, Such Were the Joys, essay 8 (1953), though the full, unredacted version was not published until 2000.