Joseph L. Mankiewicz Quotes

Shakespeare is practically our only link with the classic and the past. The future of education has much to do with whether we will be able to cling to him or not.

A work survives its readers; after a hundred or two hundred years, it is read by new readers who impose on it new modes of reading and interpretation. The work survives because of these interpretations, which are, in fact, resurrections: without them, there would be no work.

One of the saddest things about publishing is how quickly it ages what it touches. The frenzy involved in getting books on shelves, and in putting the word out that they're there, moves at a speed that is not the speed of writing, let alone of reading.

Critic's delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.

It may be that the books that were best liked in your lifetime are not the ones that are best liked 100 years later.

Read the writers whose work is still around and has survived the winds of fashion and the attacks of the ignorant and the bigoted - read everything you can get your hands on.

Mentoring is the last refuge of the older artist. With luck, disciples will keep one's books in print, one's reputation alive.

Nobody will go on being remembered for a very long time, unless you're Shakespeare or Milton. I have no hope of being remembered at all.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

We take from the art of the past what we need. The variable posthumous reputations of even the greatest artists and the unpredictable revivals of interest in even the most obscure ones tend to reveal more about those who make revisionist assessments than about those who are being reassessed.

Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.

When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.

I do not think that a museum needs to engage with pop culture in order to make itself interesting to museumgoers. Museums are already interesting and engaging with pop culture for its own sake is just a quick way to seem and become dated.

Literature is news that stays news.

Even American artists are terrorized by market forces. If one can't see the films, my wings are clipped. I am no longer concerned about this, because I'm focused on making films. Perhaps one day someone who discovers sunken treasures will reexamine my 35 or 36 films - I hope it will be 40 or 50 before I die.

Christopher Knowles, Buechner, Heiner Mueller, Burroughs, Chekhov, Shakespeare - it's all one body of work.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

The creative treasure of Israel's artists and writers will survive forever.

I think about Shakespeare. Because there have been hundreds of variations of Shakespeare's plays since they've been written, and I believe it's because they're important. They're still relevant today. 'Roots' is still relevant today. The idea that we shouldn't tell this story again is very strange to me.

I definitely don't aspire to writing that's 'timeless,' whatever that means.

I want to contribute to the culture and keep great writers alive by telling the stories of their lives.

Mere recording of an event will not make it a historical document. It will become obsolete with time. Only those that emotionally connect with the audience will stand the test of time.

All passes, Art alone Enduring stays to us; The Bust out-lasts the throne,-- The coin, Tiberius.

I just want my music to measure up to. Part of it's just thinking about my place in history and how this music is going to be perceived, if it's listened to 30, 40 years from now.