Aging & Wisdom Quote by Rita Mae Brown

Age, in Rita Mae Brown's framing, isn't a slow fade into irrelevance; it's a job description. "The true function of age is memory" turns the usual narrative of getting older on its head. Instead of treating memory as a sentimental byproduct, she casts it as a civic duty: the older you get, the more you become an archive with skin on it.

The second sentence is where the urgency snaps into focus. "I'm recording as fast as I can" reads like a line tossed off with wry breathlessness, but the subtext is edged with fear: memory isn't stable, and time isn't neutral. Aging brings not just accumulation but loss - of details, of friends, of histories that were never properly written down in the first place. Brown, a novelist, essayist, and outspoken feminist and lesbian voice, knows how easily certain lives get edited out. Recording becomes resistance against cultural amnesia, the kind that quietly rebrands struggle into trivia or erases it entirely.

The verb "recording" matters. It's not "remembering", which can stay private and soft. Recording implies craft, documentation, and audience - the work of turning lived experience into something that can outlast the body. There's also a sly nod to the writer's treadmill: even with a lifetime of material, you're still racing the clock, still trying to get it down before it disappears. The line functions as both mission statement and gallows humor, a reminder that legacy isn't granted; it's produced under deadline.