Quotes About Legacy

Mum worked as a secretary for Orson Welles for what sounded like a very miserable year. Her brother was the actor Jeremy Brett, who became famous for playing Sherlock Holmes. He was an absolutely lovely man. Very exciting and glamorous, he'd always make me feel amazing and full of confidence, like I'd picked the right thing to do in life.

Naming a bridge after Dr. King was the right thing to do.

In order to do the right thing and to provide the right long-term view for the city, it might mean you're only in politics for a little while.

'The Simpsons' money got bigger and bigger. When I left 'The Simpsons', no one thought that this thing was going to still be around. It's the cumulative effect. It's like, 'Oh my God, 25 years later, and it's still coming in.'

Clearly when there is a character based on you on 'South Park' or 'The Simpsons,' that is something that sticks with you for the rest of your career. But I'm fine with that.

'The Simpsons' is like Charlie Parker or Marlon Brando or Richard Pryor: Comedy couldn't go back to the way it was after 'The Simpsons' came out.

'Monty Python' and 'The Simpsons' have ruined comedy for writers for the rest of our lives.

If you look at 'The Sopranos,' there's this notion of a criminal element on its last legs.

Our amour fou with 'The Sopranos' is headed for long-term parking, like so many of its most memorable characters. We'll never see a show like this again.

Presumptuously, I speak for all Who fans when I say being a fan of the Who has incalculably enriched my life. What disturbs me about the Who is the way they smashed through every door of rock & roll, leaving rubble and not much else for the rest of us to lay claim to.

You see people who are 19 or 20 years old and they don't even know who The Who is. It's like, where have you been? Justin Timberlake? C'mon. Where are the roots?

There is never going to be a band like The Who again.

In the long period of time when I did talk shows and game shows, a whole new generation of people came along who thought of me as that, and not as a theater person.

Theater people are always pining and agonizing because they're afraid that they'll be forgotten. And in America they're quite right. They will be.

The originating sin of America is slavery, for which reparations should be paid and will never be paid; as a result, mini-reparations are paid daily, and the NBA remains, for me, reparations theater.

I don't want the kind of theater that I love and grew up seeing to die out.

There's been no major motion picture released by a studio, no independent motion picture, in theaters, with King at the center, in the 50 years since these events happened, when we have biopics on all kinds of ridiculous people. And nothing on King? No cinematic representation that's meaningful and centered.

The first 45 or 50 years of the regional theater movement, all these folks, they built these theaters. The job of the next generation is to maintain them.

I'll be going to the granddaddy of the Los Angeles theaters.

I'm from Chicago, my family started a chain of movie theaters in Chicago that were around for 70 years and then one of them became the head of Paramount and the other was the head of production at MGM and we all came out of Chicago.

All these actors who died before I was born, all the theaters and the artistic movements - all that stuff fills you up and makes you feel like you're the inheritor of all this information and of all its passion.

I studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which was founded by Laurence Olivier and has alumni like Jeremy Irons and Daniel Day Lewis. It's a very erudite institution; its ethos, really, was always theatre-based.

I always go back to theatre. It's probably where I'll draw my last breath.

I was one of the artistic directors of the Steppenwolf Theatre, which me and many dear buddies started all the way back in 1974, and I have a lot of that in my makeup.