...Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on aging and his view on life after being voted out of the Oval Office.

"What I saw as I licked my wounds and realized that I had maybe 25 years of life expectancy in front of me, was say what in the world am I going to do with these enforced retirement years that will be, I'd say interesting and gratifying and suited to my own priorities, but also would utilize to the utmost the talent or ability or background or experience that I have accumulated over the previous years of my life? And that's what we did - a very deep and penetrating and sometimes painful reassessment of what Rosalynn and I would do after the White House. I think in general terms that's what everyone should do. I think that one of the most valuable books that I've ever written is "Virtues of Aging." Just showing that when you reach the age of retirement, either mandatory or involuntarily, it should be an opportunity to open your possibilities to things that, that perhaps in the past, you have really wanted to do and didn't have time."

...Cosmopolitan's International Editor Helen Gurley Brown on how she stays sexy at 83.

"I guess in my whole life, I never thought about being older, just doing the best I could with what I had. Nowadays that I am older, I’m trying to do the best I can. I cope and I’m not thinking about 104 or 109 or 99. I’m just thinking how can I be the best 83-year-old person I can be? How I can hang on. I’ve got a big splash of nail polish on my wrists to remind me to stand up and sit up straight...

....Every morning I hit the floor. I do half an hour of exercise and watch Good Morning America. I’m not any good at it. I have these 7-pound weights - I’ve gone down from 10 - that I can barely lift but I do. I wasn’t a good athlete, nobody wanted me on their basketball or dodge ball team, but somehow, in my forties, I had a girlfriend who had an exercise regimen she got in the mail. You paid $25 to get it and I studied that. In my forties, I began to exercise and now at 83, I must say, I don’t miss a day."

...and Dr. C. Everett Koop, former U.S. Surgeon General, on staying mentally and physically fit at age 87.

"I was always active. When I was a medical resident, I used a pedometer. This showed I walked about 14 miles daily as I walked all over the hospital wings and so on. When I was a surgeon even decades later, I still walked about half that. Unlike the common advice, my answer is not just to keep active, for example, with hobbies or some light volunteer activities. My views go beyond this and are shaped by having observed colleagues who reached age 65 and were hurt at that time when the University just tells you there is no longer a role for you".