Quotes About Legacy

I must confess I love female writers: Jane Austen, Isak Dinesen, Colette, Willa Cather, Dawn Powell, Joan Didion. I grew up on the Bronte sisters, and Daphne du Maurier.

The respect I had to give my brothers and sisters growing up I think has helped me. I want my kids to be raised the same way.

We all have little sisters and cousins who look up to us, and we see what they go through. So we have to be an example. A lot of artists come into this business and they don't see things that way. But as you get older - and now that we also have children - your conscience starts working on you.

I have my mother's nose and my father's bone structure, which I've passed on to my children. My eldest daughter and my mother, when she was young, could be sisters.

All my mother's sisters are matriarchs - there are big characters and opinions.

The reason there's no modern-day Shakespeare is because he didn't have anything to do except sit in a room with a candle and think.

It's hard to sit back and just go through your whole career, because everything's always moving so fast. But the odd milestone is always a nice moment, and when you look at the previous players to have hit those kind of milestones, it's nice to be in that company.

I don't sit here and dream because I don't care about the future. I wouldn't take nothin' for my past and I've got enough behind me that I can write forever.

Portraits of other great ones look down on you in your college halls; but while you are young and sit at the brief feast, what avails their serene gaze if it do not lift up your hearts and movingly persuade you to match your manhood to its inheritance?

I'm 43. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet.

Nobody's ever kept their sitcom character going after the show's off the air.

My mom always worked, and I certainly don't want to look back and think, 'Well, I don't have kids, but I'm glad I did that sitcom.'

I didn't want to have to follow 'Everybody Loves Raymond' with another sitcom. Let it be my sitcom legacy, and leave it at that.

'Fresh Off the Boat' will be syndicated. This show and these characters will live forever in the pantheon of classic family sitcoms.

You can't erase Bill Cosby's contributions. That's the conflict. He's one of the most influential comedians of all time, and 'The Cosby Show' is one of the most influential sitcoms ever. When I watched as a kid, I wanted Cliff to be my dad. Everybody did.

You don't let a historic site rot.

I grew up in Arkansas, and I went to Little Rock Central High, which was the site of a desegregation crisis in '57. I graduated in '97.

And, I believe that if a man dies with a single penny still sitting in the bank, he's a fool.

The idea of regretting not doing this seemed insane to me. Sitting in the corner at a bar at age 60, saying: 'I could've been Bond. Buy me a drink.' That's the saddest place I could be. At least now at 60 I can say: 'I was Bond. Now buy me a drink.'

No one reaches the Oval Office without a great deal of admiration for the institution - and himself - so it's unsurprising that sitting presidents favor the biographies of former presidents.

Professionally, I remember Cronkite as a kid growing up, and more so for me, the importance of Cronkite was not him sitting there at the anchor desk, but him out there doing things.

I've been given an amazing opportunity and I could not be more grateful. But I also know that all this will eventually die off. It's not real. It will go away and then you'll go away and then, I don't know, I'll be left sitting in some English hotel room.

It's always great playing with other musicians. It's also a great situation where I'm the older guy, I've influenced generations of guitar players.

I think these movies are as much for people of that time as for people who weren't born. For people who weren't born, they see how leaders must act under a crisis situation, not trying to be re-elected or not trying to check polls, that they go from their gut check.