Dinah Maria Mulock Quotes

I don't believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.

Films and gramophone records, music, books and buildings show clearly how vigorously a man's life and work go on after his 'death,' whether we feel it or not, whether we are aware of the individual names or not. There is no such thing as death according to our view!

I've achieved what every artist wants, which is that some of their work will outlive them.

If somebody wants to sing my songs after I'm gone, nobody will be happier than my dead body.

It's what all writers dream of, that our work finds a measure of immortality that long outlives the words of any critic.

The painter leaves his mark. And I just put in two statues in Rhode Island that I'm working on. And I think that's going to make me last longer than me.

I want to create a body of work that is entertaining and speaks to people for a long time. Longer than my life span.

What’s written remains, though a writer is buried beneath the ground.

You want all your books to stick around after you've gone.

If we're going to go really deep, we're all trying to live forever. My music is my way of doing that.

I try to give my work everything I've got, because when you're dead or you're out of the business or you're in an old actors' home somewhere, if you've done a good job, your work will still be 16 years old and dancing and healthy and pirouetting and arabesquing all over the place. And they'll say, "That's who he is! He's not this decaying skeleton."

That’s one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing’s real, it just lives. All the attendant hoopla about it, the success over it or the critical rejection—none of that really matters. In the end, the thing will survive or not on its own merits. Not that immortality via art is any big deal. Truffaut died, and we all felt awful about it, and there were the appropriate eulogies, and his wonderful films live on. But it’s not much help to Truffaut.

The hand of bone and sinew and flesh achieves its immortality in taking up a pen. The hand on a page wields a greater power than the fleshly hand ever could in life.

In some respects I will never die. Because art is immortal. What we leave behind and what we create - the energy that we put out into the world is eternal.

I always want to do music that inspires or influences another generation. You want what you create to live, be it sculpture or painting or music. Like Michelangelo, he said, “I know the creator will go, but his work survives. That is why to escape death, I attempt to bind my soul to my work.

Like all artists, I want to cheat death a little and contribute something to the next generation.

Blest be the art that can immortalize.

Fortunately age does not affect literature. After a man is dead, he may continue in the business and often rank higher than his living competitors.

It's amazing that a man who is dead can talk to people through these pages. As long as this books survives, his ideas live.

Literature is the best way to overcome death.

The great and good do no die even in this world. Embalmed in books, their spirits walk abroad. The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.

I just want people to remember me a hundred years from now. I don't care that they're not able to quote any single line that I've written. But just that they can say, "Oh, he was a writer." That's sufficiently an honored position for me.

Ray Bradbury was not ahead of his time. He was perfectly of his time, and more than that: he created his time and left his mark on the time that followed.

Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality.

I'd like to be remembered. I'd like to think that someday two guys will be talking in a bar and one of them will say something like, 'Yeah, he's a good shortstop, but he's not as good as ole Ripken was.'