David Bailey Quotes

And who cares, five years down the road, what most movies made or didn't make? If it's good, it stands up.

It is the mark of great art that its appeal is universal and eternal.

Good art doesn't really have an expiration date on it.

What makes a classic is difficult to define. It's entirely subjective, of course. And the term is employed far too promiscuously.

Art is forever.

Painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless.

As a filmmaker, you aspire to want to make movies that can hopefully stand the test of time, but you never know when that will happen or if that will happen.

If a song was ever good, it's still good.

If our music survives, which I have no doubt it will, then it will because it is good.

I just want to make sure I'm contributing good films to movie history rather than being famous just to be famous.

Poetry's always dead, you know? You don't realize how good poetry is until 15 years later.

It's very weird about movies: you never know which ones are going to stay alive and which one are going to be meaningless. When you're there, you couldn't possibly predict it. Some things slowly die, and others slowly stay a while.

The work will stand, no matter what.

There are a lot of bad films out there. There's a lot of bad architecture out there, and I think sometimes it takes a lot of time to begin to see what's really good. And I think what the test seems to be is, what really sticks with you. And what really becomes a part of your life.

What lists and awards don't measure - and I feel this strongly - is the lasting value of any work of art. They're a snapshot of a moment, and one should always consider their judgments in that context.

The work that lasts over time is the work which still speaks to us when all contemporary interest in that work is extinct.

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.

I am aware of the words 'national treasure' being attached to me occasionally. It just makes me feel old.

There's a reason you can still read Thucydides, and it still makes sense to you thousands of years later.

Good music will always be recognized in the end.

'Hairspray' has never been irrelevant, which is, in some ways, heartbreaking.

If it's fifty years from now and it still has the same value, that's a movie.

A man is not necessarily a master because he happened to compose two or three centuries ago. Let us beware of the worship of mere antiquity.

A body of work may be reviled - mostly by those who have no knowledge of its workings - and yet still carry elements of what can only be considered eternal truths.