Anthony Michael Hall Quotes

I want to make a serious legacy.

One of the purposes of life, and selfishly what makes people happy, is building things that are impactful.

I hope I will have achieved something lasting.

What I'm trying to do now in my life - not just with the building, but with everything - is to construct things that will have enduring qualities, and won't just be ephemeral flashes in the pan.

All architects want to live beyond their deaths.

The thought that all experience will be lost at the moment of my death makes me feel pain and fear... What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it all away... We remedy this sadness by working. For example, by writing, painting, or building cities.

We should all be so lucky in our lives to create things that we're still talking about 25 years later.

When I'm dead, I wanna leave a body of work, like authors or great painters do. I don't wanna get ideas above my station, but why shouldn't this be comparable? Pop music was supposed to be a flash in the pan, but here we are 50 years later, and it means something to us, and it always will do. It's incredibly important.

When I'm dead, I wanna leave a body of work, like authors or great painters do.

If my name every goes down in history, it will be for this act.

I don't want to be a flash in the pan. I don't want people to just remember me for one thing.

That's the kind of work I like to do: challenging work that has a message.

Defensive awards and accolades aside, to have your jersey retired puts you in a position where you'll be known forever.

I want to put my name in history. I love history.

I want to leave a legacy behind that is undeniable.

I wouldn't go as far to say that anything that I've done is timeless.

I try to give my work everything I've got, because when you're dead or you're out of the business or you're in an old actors' home somewhere, if you've done a good job, your work will still be 16 years old and dancing and healthy and pirouetting and arabesquing all over the place. And they'll say, "That's who he is! He's not this decaying skeleton."

Make your life a story worth telling. You only get one shot at this existence, and one day when you’re gone the most important thing you’ll leave behind is the legacy of the life you lived. Make sure you make it a story you’re proud to have others tell.

It's a great honor that something that you took part in creating becomes this forever object.

Better was it to go unknown and leave behind you an arch, then to burn like a meteor and leave no dust.

I hope people are reading my work in the future. I hope I have done more than frightened a couple of generations. I hope I've inspired a few people one way or another.

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.

Once I finally stepped on the moon, no matter what was to come of the next three days - or the rest of my life - nobody could take those steps from me. People ask how long will they be there, and I say forever, however long forever is, like my daughter’s initials that I scribbled in the sand [TDC for Tracy Dawn Cernan].

Truthfully, I guess I would like to be remembered as a great writer and a kind person. I wouldn't mind if an expensive bag were named after me, like Jane Birkin.

The sobering thought is that individuals and societies are not, in the end, remembered for how they made their money, but for how they spent it.