The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.

L’Engle frames aging not as a process of replacement—where youth is lost and only decline remains—but as accumulation. Each stage of life becomes part of the self, so maturity can be understood as a layering of experiences, capacities, and memories rather than a subtraction. The line resists cultural narratives that equate getting older with becoming “less” and instead suggests continuity of identity: the child, adolescent, and young adult remain present within the older person. It also implies a gentler ethic toward oneself and others—recognizing that people carry their earlier selves forward, with all their vulnerabilities and joys, even as they change.