Brian Tyree Henry Quotes

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

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

Nothing dates like hate and in literature a little of it goes a very long way.

James Baldwin had an unrivaled understanding of politics and history and, above all, the human condition. His prose is laser sharp. His onslaught is massive and leaves no room for response. Every sentence is an immediate cocked grenade. You pick it up, then realize that it is too late. It just blows up in your face. And yet he still managed to stay human, tender, accessible.

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

Romance can end, but I don't think art really ends, as romantic as that might sound.

You never know how things will last, if they will last, and how people will use them in the future. It was a fun movie for young people at the time in the 80s; but it struck a cord with people and it has lasted so I'm very proud of being a part of that.

A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway.

It is amazing that something I did 23 years ago still has an audience that people respond to and I am touched and surprised that people are still very positive about.

Forty years later, people still swear they can hear his offstage scream.

If something becomes old-fashioned, it was no good to start with. Think about it. Michelangelo is not old-fashioned.

Never forget that what becomes timeless was once truly new.

We took Beowulf, the epic poem in Old English, and put it right together with John Gardner's contemporary retelling. If you bring it into today, we really feel that it has something very fresh to say now.

Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear, and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses, he will endure or be forgotten.

'Moby-Dick' has a remarkable way of resonating with whatever is going on in the world at that particular moment.

I don't think I ever write songs involving politics, because they get dated way too quick. Any view you have can usually be made into something more general, and that can stand throughout time.

I think in some ways it's good to have at least one thing for which you could be really immortal, you know?

As any student of literature knows, the books that last are often not the books that are most popular when they are written. Both 'Moby Dick' and 'The Great Gatsby' were complete failures, critically and commercially, when they first appeared.

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.

So much of what we do is ephemeral and quickly forgotten, even by ourselves, so it's gratifying to have something you have done linger in people's memories.

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

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.

Only once in a thousand years or so do we get to hear a Mozart or see a Picasso or read a Shakespeare. Ali was one of them, and yet at his heart, he was still a kid from Louisville who ran with the gods and walked with the crippled and smiled at the foolishness of it all.