William Gaddis Quotes

A legacy is a lot of times determined by how people accept your music. And sometimes people's legacy starts late or starts early, or they last a long time or a short amount of time. As a musician, I've never taken an approach of wanting to try to control that because I don't think that I can.

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

I just want to leave this world with a massive catalog of songs.

Those critics awards come and go every year, but the finished movie is your work.

Everything about Sinatra was good. He had the ability to pick great songs, and once Sinatra had sung them, that pretty much was it. He pretty much put his stamp on everything.

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

There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead.

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!

My goal was always to be involved in music that would outlive me. And maybe that's actually happening.

What matters here are the works - finally without them his life would be uninteresting. What matters, that is, are the astonishing things that he left behind. If we can get the life in relation to the works, then it can take off.

I want to write music that will outlive me.

You're shadowed by your own dream, especially as you get older, of trying to create something that will last in poetry. And so, you're working on its behalf.

It is our art that has an opportunity to leave a footprint in the sand. They don't wrap fish in our work.

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

An aging writer has the not insignificant satisfaction of a shelf of books behind him that, as they wait for their ideal readers to discover them, will outlast him for a while.

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.

What I'm most pleased about is that there's no particular decline. The songs I wrote 40 years ago are no worse and no better - there's a consistency.

My advice to composers is, 'Try to reach 90, and everyone will love you.'

When I'm dead, I want to be remembered as a musician of some worth and substance.

One thing about an artist, it doesn't matter how much your work sells for in your life, it's going to sell for ten times more than that after you're dead, and that's what you have to protect.

I've been lucky enough to do a few films that will last longer than an opening weekend and those films are the ones I'm proud of.

The real kiss of death - particularly with my father - is the extraordinary popularity of his work.

One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

When I'm dead, I wanna leave a body of work, like authors or great painters do.

In his lifetime Lincoln was maligned and traduced, but detraction during a man's lifetime affords no test of his life's value nor offers any forecast of history's verdict. It would almost seem as if the glory of immortality were anticipated in the life of the great by detraction and denial whilst they yet lived.