Andy Rooney? Vic Smith? Sam Patterson? Eve Watson? Jim Harvey? Anonymous?
Question for Quote Investigator: Every year of childhood feels like an eon. Every year of middle age feels like six months. Every year of old age feels like a month. A folksy simile expresses this idea:
Life is like a roll of toilet paper — the closer you get to the end of it, the faster it goes.
This statement is usually attributed to U.S. radio and television personality Andy Rooney, but I have never seen a solid citation. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest close match found by QI appeared in December 1985 within a column by Vic Smith published in “The Florida Times-Union” of Jacksonville, Florida. Smith specified an anonymous attribution. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
I guess it’s like I heard a feller say not long ago: Life is like a roll of toilet paper — the closer you get to the end of it, the faster it goes.
Andy Rooney received credit by May 2000, but QI believes that the attribution was not persuasive. Details are presented further below.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1966 Sam Patterson published the novel “A Nickel’s Worth of Ice” which contained a thematically related simile about mortality and toilet paper. This simile was credited to the character Aunt Bluebelle:2
Reminds me of Bluebelle a little. She always said life is just like a roll of toilet paper. You keep yanking at it piece by piece until you got to the end. It’s always a shock when you get to the cardboard roller. It seems like so much paper that it ought to last forever. But it don’t. Sooner or later all you have left is that pitiful little cardboard roller.”
In May 1967 the “Durham Morning Herald” of North Carolina printed a book review of “A Nickel’s Worth of Ice”. The reviewer reprinted the simile while crediting the main character Carey Niven instead of Aunt Bluebelle:3
Carey does, however, indulge in a soul-search and concludes that life is like a roll of toilet paper. “You keep yanking at it piece by piece until you get to the end. It’s always a shock when you get to the cardboard roller.”
In 1976 the “Fort Lauderdale News” of Florida printed a different simile featuring toilet paper:4
Jotted Eve Watson, may your life be like a roll of toilet paper, long and useful.
In December 1985 the quotation under examination appeared in “The Florida Times-Union”as mentioned previously. A few months later, in March 1986, the quotation appeared again in the same newspaper:5
Jacksonville businessman Jim Harvey was recalling an event that he thought happened recently and learned it happened two years ago. It reminded him of this gem of wisdom: “Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it rolls.”
In 1990 “The Independent” newspaper of London, England printed a brief review of a new television sitcom. The leading character had authored an incomplete novel containing the following variant simile:6
The first sentence of his unfinished work, The Yuppie Versus The Chippie, does not bode well, however: “Life’s like a toilet roll — it’s only when you get to the end that you realise how much you’ve wasted.”
In 1995 H. Jackson Brown Jr. published the second volume of the compilation series “Live and Learn and Pass It On” which contained sayings from Brown and anonymous people. The quotation was credited to an unnamed person who was 66 years old:7
I’ve learned that life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.
—Age 66
In 2000 a message in the newsgroup alt.romance.chat contained a compilation of thirty-four miscellaneous sayings under the title “Words of wisdom from Andy Rooney”. Unfortunately, several of the sayings were not from Rooney; instead, they were lifted from the first two volumes of “Live and Learn and Pass It On”. These four sayings appeared in the Usenet post:8
I’ve learned…
that being kind is more important than being right.I’ve learned…
that you should never say no to a gift from a child.I’ve learned…
that life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.I’ve learned…
that love, not time, heals all wounds.
In 2001 the compilation “The Birthday Book, Or, Rotarians Say the Darndest Things!” contained the following item:9
“I’ve learned that life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.”
— Andy Rooney
Dean W. Nelson, Nursing Home Administration
In conclusion, this quip appeared in December 1985 within a newspaper column by Vic Smith who specified an anonymous attribution. The implausible ascription to Andy Rooney appeared many years later in 2000.
Image Notes: Illustration of toilet paper rolls from colourblindkevin art at Unsplash. The image has been cropped and resized.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Mardy Grothe who mentioned this saying in the October 11, 2026, edition of his newsletter “Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week”. This inspired QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. On his website Grothe noted that the attribution to Andy Rooney was unsupported.
- 1985 December 25, The Florida Times-Union – Jacksonville Journal, Poke McHenry: Aston Martin Christmas would be nice by Vic Smith (Times-Union Columnist), Quote Page B1, Column 1, Jacksonville, Florida. (Newspapers_com) link ↩︎
- 1966, A Nickel’s Worth of Ice by Sam Patterson, Chapter 26, Quote Page 279, Alfred A. Knopf, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1967 May 14, Durham Morning Herald, Nickel’s Worth Turns Out To Be Not Enough by M.D., (Book review of Sam Patterson’s “A Nickel’s Worth of Ice”), Quote Page 5D, Column 5, Durham, North Carolina. (Newspapers_com) link ↩︎
- 1976 June 23, Fort Lauderdale News, NYC Has an Excess of Welfare Children by Wallie Nelsen, Quote Page 10D, Column 4, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. (Newspapers_com) link ↩︎
- 1986 March 22, The Florida Times-Union – Jacksonville Journal, Thomas Creek better than P-farm Place by Bob Phelps (Times-Union columnist), Quote Page A3, Column 1, Jacksonville, Florida. (Newspapers_com) link ↩︎
- 1990 June 10, The Independent On Sunday, This Week’s Television by James Rampton, Quote Page 62, Column 5, London, England. (Newspapers_com) link ↩︎
- 1995 Copyright, Live and Learn and Pass It On, Volume 2, People ages 5 to 95 share what they’ve discovered about life, love, and other good stuff, Written and compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr., Quote Page 131, Published by Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville, Tennessee. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- Usenet discussion message, Timestamp: May 7, 2000, 3:00:00 AM, Newsgroup: alt.romance.chat, From: enialle, Subject: I learned. (Google Groups Search; Accessed Oct 12, 2026) link ↩︎
- 2001 Copyright, The Birthday Book, Or, Rotarians Say the Darndest Things!, Compiled and Edited by William C. Robbins, Section: From Media Personalities, Quote Page 20, Badger Books Inc., Oregon, Wisconsin. (Verified with scans) ↩︎