“It'll say, 'Danny Elfman, who wrote the theme to 'The Simpsons,' etcetera…That's what I'll be remembered for.”

—  Danny Elfman

On what he believes will be his obituary, from the Los Angeles Times cover story, "A Different Beat", 1999.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It'll say, 'Danny Elfman, who wrote the theme to 'The Simpsons,' etcetera…That's what I'll be remembered for." by Danny Elfman?
Danny Elfman photo
Danny Elfman 3
American composer, record producer, and actor 1953

Related quotes

John O'Hara photo

“They say great themes make great novels.. but what these young writers don't understand is that there is no greater theme than men and women.”

John O'Hara (1905–1970) American journalist
George Gordon Byron photo

“I'll publish right or wrong:
Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.”

George Gordon Byron English Bards and Scotch Reviewers

Source: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), Line 5.

Henry Miller photo

“Wagner wrote an opera titled Tristan and Yseult and in it there is a theme called Love Death theme. It is so sensual, so sexual that he was criticized for having introduced sex into music. And that was quite a few years before the appearance of Elvis Presley!”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Reflections (1981)

Richard Strauss photo

“I am not one to compose long melodies as did Mozart. I can’t get beyond short themes. But what I can do, is utilize such a theme, paraphrase it and extract everything that is in it, and I don’t think there’s anybody today who can match me in that.”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director

Quotes from Stefan Zweigs's posthumous memoire, The World of Yesterday. Zweig worked with Strauss closely on the opera The Silent Woman in the period 1931-1934 and got to know him well.
Other sources

Freeman Dyson photo

“The expansion of life, moving out from Earth into its inheritance, is an even greater theme than the expansion of England across the Atlantic. As Hakluyt wrote that there is under our noses the great and ample country of Virginia, I am saying that there is under our noses the territory of nine planets, forty moons, ten thousand asteroids and a trillion comets.”

Freeman Dyson book Infinite in All Directions

Source: Infinite in All Directions (1988), Ch. 7 : Roots

Jen Wang photo

“I wrote this book for my teenage self, so it’s all about themes that were important to my young self: questioning your identity and gender, but also your creative aspirations and the person you want to be.”

Jen Wang (1984) American comics artist

On her graphic novel The Prince and the Dressmaker in “Exclusive Interview & Graphic Novel Excerpt: Jen Wang’s The Prince and the Dressmaker” https://www.bookish.com/articles/jen-wang-prince-dressmaker/ in Bookish (2018 Feb 8)

Michael Halliday photo

“The theme is what is being talked about, the point of departure for the clause as message”

Michael Halliday (1925–2018) Australian linguist

Source: 1970s and later, Cohesion in English (English Language), 1976, p. 212.
Context: The theme is what is being talked about, the point of departure for the clause as message, and the speaker has within certain limits the option of selecting any element in the clause as thematic.

Henry James photo

“I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

"Venice," The Century Magazine, vol. XXV (November 1882), reprinted in Portraits of Places (1883) and later in Italian Hours http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/8ihou10.txt (1909), ch: I: Venice, pt. I.

Greg Bear photo

“The hardest theme in science fiction is that of the alien. The simplest solution of all is in fact quite profound—that the real difficulty lies not in understanding what is alien, but in understanding what is self. We are all aliens to each other, all different and divided. We are even aliens to ourselves at different stages of our lives. Do any of us remember precisely what it was like to be a baby?”

Greg Bear (1951) American writer best known for science fiction

"Introduction to 'Plague of Conscience'", The Collected Stories of Greg Bear (2002)

“I can remember being young enough, long ago, to believe that in Tennessee Williams the giant themes of Greek tragedy had returned, all hung about with Magnolias. Ignorance of Greek tragedy helped in this view.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Over the tarp'
Essays and reviews, The Crystal Bucket (1982)

Related topics