Walter Savage Landor Quotes

I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time

Every writer secretly hopes that what he or she has written will endure.

Only a few things are worth a second reading—rarely are things of such enduring quality that they are read many times and live to inspire a second or third generation.

The great thing about James Baldwin and his writing is that it's still fresh every time you pick it up. That's also the sad thing about his writing sometimes, too.

I want to write books that can be read a hundred years from now, and readers wouldn't be bogged down by irrelevant details.

Only well-written works will descend to posterity. Fulness of knowledge, interesting facts, even useful inventions, are no pledge of immortality, for they may be employed by more skilful hands; they are outside the man; the style is the man himself.

A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

It's amazing how, age after age, in country after country, and in all languages, Shakespeare emerges as incomparable.

It's an article of faith that the novels I've loved will live inside me forever.

There will always be a Beach Boys. Being a Beach Boy is like being in love.

My readers think that I write for the day because my writings are based on the day. So I shall have to wait until my writings are obsolete. Then they may acquire timeliness.

Enduring fame is promised only to those writers who can offer to successive generations a substance constantly renewed; for every generation arrives upon the scene with its own particular hunger.

If any of my plays outlive me or get on library book shelves and somehow stay read, all of a sudden it's a testament to "that's part of our culture, that's part of our history."

To my mind that literature is best and most enduring which is characterized by a noble simplicity.

The exercise of letters is sometimes linked to the ambition to construct an absolute book, a book of books that includes the others like a Platonic archetype, an object whose virtues are not diminished by the passage of time.

I hope people find my movies funny and will watch them years from now. And, in terms of writing, I hope that something remains that will not seem old-fashioned, that will still have a ­vibrancy to it 50 years from now.

Seeking to perpetuate one's name on earth is like writing on the sand by the seashore; to be perpetual it must be written on eternal shores.

Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always seem untimely.

The stream of Time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.

The measure of a great writer is not how many weeks his books spend on the best-seller lists, but how many years his books remain in print after his death.

The only thing I want is something I can't have; and that is to know if, 100 years from now, people will still buy my books.

To place your name by gift or bequest in the keeping of an active educational institution is to...make a permanent contribution to the welfare of humanity.

I'm still the baddest expletive in the world. Yeah, I'm getting older, but Kareem got older. Hakeem got older. I don't need Earthlings' respect. When it's all said and done, my name will be there and it will be mentioned ... unless you Earthlings try to erase it.

I die with a joyful heart in the knowledge of our infinite achievements and of a contribution unique in the history that bears my name.