Mel Brooks Quotes

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!

What we have as artists is the immortalization opportunity that others don't have, because our work is lasting; it's there forever to 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.

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.

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.

As long as my ballets are danced, I will live.

Years from now, after I'm gone, someone will listen to what I've done and know I was here. They may not know or care who I was, but they'll hear my guitars speaking for me.

When you write a song, a song has longevity.

An author departs, he does not die.

The cool thing about writing music, writing anything, is that once you publish it, it's there forever.

I don't really need to be remembered. I hope the music's remembered.

Things you create with your mind are always part of your postmortal life, whether they seem real or not.

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

The great thing about a painter is that he or she lives on - I mean, Andrew Wyeth is more in his paintings than he was walking around.

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. I don't wanna get ideas above my station, but why shouldn't this be comparable? Pop music was supposed to be a flash in the pan, but here we are 50 years later, and it means something to us, and it always will do. It's incredibly important.

Art goes beyond politics. Even if there are writers who are involved in politics, eventually, in one or two centuries, it's not their politics which is going to count, but the fact of having given life to feelings, of having created characters and made a living work of art.

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

Art is the closest you can get to immortality, though it's a poor substitute - you're working for people not yet born - and people want it because it is brilliant. It ends up in museums anyway; the rich have to give it back to the people, it's their only option. There are no pockets in a shroud.

The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die.

Blest be the art that can immortalize.

I think about all the people who have created something that lives after them - works of art, plays, music, films, literature, poetry that will be read, seen, performed, and heard for the rest of time. If I could do something that lives after me, then I think I will have had a life well led.

Poetry, which is written while no one is looking, is meant to be looked at for all time.

With my art, it's the one thing that I know will outlive me and outlive my feelings. It will outlive my depressive seasons.