Jeanette Winterson Quotes

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

Audiences aren't going to get rid of me. One thing I can say, with absolute certainty, is that my shows will still be performed when I'm dead, buried and forgotten. They're going to absolutely outlive me, which is a wonderful thing to think about.

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.

My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever.

Immortality is a by-product of good work.

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

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

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

A great song is one that is around even when I'm not.

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

I just hope that some of the movies I'm in are still welcome years from now.

I don't think anything you've written is immortal as yet.

I try to make sure that I make music that can stand the test of time.

Art is forever.

Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.

We should all be so lucky in our lives to create things that we're still talking about 25 years later.

Yes, my works... are enshrined in museums, but I don't care if the pieces fall apart in 20 years.

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

All the buzz can be very much here today and gone tomorrow, but my focus is creating music that will last forever.

The idea of a piece of literature as a vessel that could contain your life and lived after you had died and been forgotten struck me as akin to artificial intelligence.

The one amazing thing about 'Jack' is that I did it in 2001, you know, and it still survived. There's something about it that's connected with people.

I want to be somebody, a person, first that people remember, but also, I want music that I release to still be around. I don't want it to just be cool for a second and be gone.

The stuff that's good is the stuff that lives on.

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 think all creative people are operating from the fear that, of the best of what they did, will anybody remember it? Will anybody tell stories about them? Will anybody keep those pictures on the mantle long after they are gone? It's why people write stories. It's peoples' grave markers.