Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

At the end of the day I'm gonna be dead one day, and what people say about me is going what I accomplished and what I did in my life and how my children are. And I don't think it's gonna be what was printed in the tabloids this year.

People often ask me how would I like to be remembered and I answer that I would simply like to be remembered.

I don't get in vote in whether or how people remember me when I'm gone. It's really dangerous to sit around and worry about it too much, for me. It gets me way too in myself to worry about what people are going to think about me when I'm not around anymore.

People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.

When I die, the world is going to talk about me. They will never forget me and I will never have any regrets. If nothing else, the world will know I was here. I think that everyone should make their mark wherever they are. They will talk about you way after you're gone. Make your mark. Live your life.

I think people in the future will come up to me and say, "Everything that you are and everything that you have is because of that butler [film]." Of course, that's Oprah's line from the movie, but I think it will resonate with my legacy with the movie.

Nobody ever recognizes themselves unless they are not the character. There are many people who have claimed to be in my books, but unfortunately they were usually people that I didn't know.

When you remember me, it means you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart.

I kept thinking how they were all names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing dead people keep.

I like to think that people live on in other people's memories.

As far as what people think of me, maybe my stuff should just be put online for free downloads when I'm gone.

I'm of an age when if I started to do eulogies, I'd be doing nothing else. You don't want to be remembered? I don't want them to be told to remember me.

I sometimes think, with a sad delight, that if one day, in a future I no longer belong to, these sentences, that I write, last with praise, I will at last have the people who understand me, those mine, the true family to be born in and be loved... I will only be understood in effigy, when affection no longer repays the dead the unaffection that was, when living.

I know not whether, in the eyes of the world, a brilliant death is not preferred to an obscure life of rectitude. Most men are remembered as they died, and not as they lived. We gaze with admiration upon the glories of the setting sun, yet scarcely bestow a passing glance upon its noonday splendor.

I just have to remind myself that my daily quotidie in life has almost nothing to do with any aspect of my professional life as a public figure. And I think a lot of people get to that point - specifically, sort of getting comfortable looking out for yourself and taking care of yourself and defining yourself based on healthier criteria, and not criteria that's established by complete strangers that you've never met.

Me, as myself, I don't think I'm particularly funny. But I've noticed that people in my life always have found me amusing. Which, when I was little, really bothered me.

People die, but books never die.

When we die our entire legacy is simply the added together strengths of all the connections we make with others. This is the ghost of ourselves we leave behind. This is showing up.

Am I an intellectual? I don't think so. Less than people sometimes think, I have to say. But more than some others think.

When I'm traveling to promote my book, I feel like an artful impostor. What I really am is when I'm in my (painter's) studio and when I'm writing. With actors, it's the same thing. They're kind of artful impostors in public. When you get to know them, they're different people.

I don't do anything to try to change people's perceptions of me. I tend to think that's sort of an ego driven thing.

I want to be remembered for my football and the pleasure I gave people.

I can't picture people talking about me 50 years from now.

It's very odd to observe someone else taking your identity into their own hands and getting it all wrong. I don't think most people will ever get to experience how truly weird it is.

We're constantly being told what other people think we are, and that's why it is so important to know yourself.