Quotes About Legacy

I like so many different directors: Scorsese, Coppola, Cassavetes, Jarmusch, Gus van Sant, Woody Allen and the greats like Fellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky and among current filmmakers von Trier, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai.

I'm a huge Bob Hope fan, up until about the late '50s. I've seen so many of his movies up until then, and they're a big influence on me and a big influence on Woody Allen, who is basically just ripping off Bob Hope for his first five or six movies.

Woody Allen is in his '70s and he's making movies, so I look forward to getting there.

People sometimes forget all the films that we've done. They remember the likes of 'Malcolm X' and 'Do the Right Thing.' But I've been working since 1986. From the beginning, I was determined to not just be a flash in the pan. I've got to keep up with Woody Allen. He's lapping me.

I consider myself a Jewish writer, like all my heroes: Tom Stoppard, David Mamet, Philip Roth, Arthur Miller, Woody Allen.

There is an amazing feminist writer called Lindy West; she wrote a very nice piece for The New York Times. She wrote about Woody Allen, saying if we can't go after your work or your career, we will go after your legacy. You will never be remembered the same way. I think a lot of women will have to take solace in that.

I don't really believe in trying to erase every Woody Allen movie from history. For one thing, that's kind of unfair to all the people who worked on those movies or albums or whatever it is. What did they do wrong to have their work erased from culture?

We all go back to our roots. My father went to the central west, went to Ilfracombe in 1919. He was the manager of the wool scour there. And, Ilfracombe was right at the heart of Australia's great wool industry, and my mother was a teacher at Winton.

I would say 'struggling' is a good word. We were all struggling to keep doing what we were doing, and more things were expected of us. I mean, one of the big things was how in the world are we going to top 'Hotel California?'

We have come to a turning point in the road. If we turn to the right mayhap our children and our children's children will go that way; but if we turn to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to His Word.

The people and the cultures of what is known as Africa are older than the word 'Africa.' According to most records, old and new, Africans are the oldest people on the face of the earth. The people now called Africans not only influenced the Greeks and the Romans, they influenced the early world before there was a place called Europe.

India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples.

I never have really become accustomed to the 'John.' Nobody ever really calls me John... I've always been Duke or Marion or John Wayne. It's a name that goes well together, and it's like one word - John Wayne.

I think my novel, 'Walden Two,' has made people stop and look at the culture they have inherited and wonder if it is the last word or whether it can be changed.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans - born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.

I had pro offers from the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers, who were pretty hard up for linemen in those days. If I had gone into professional football the name Jerry Ford might have been a household word today.

In the end, I still have the same hope as my father - that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the last word.

I'm not interested in my legacy. I made up a word: 'live-acy.' I'm more interested in living.

My father came to the U.S. from Lebanon in 1920 when he was 8 without knowing a word of English. He traveled to Green Bay, Wis., married, bought a house, and he and my mom, Helen, raised 10 kids. Everything depended on his one-man business driving a truck.

Sometimes I wish my first word was 'quote,' so that on my death bed, my last words could be 'end quote.'

The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.

I want my words to survive translation.

I don't want to be remembered. I want the nice words when I can hear them.

Rob Thomas, the Action Bronson and the Riff Raff. Both the musicians, they know who I am and they know I come from oldest country in the world and if I want my words like the music. I forever love them like the Frank Sinatra.