“For me sculpture is divinity. This is the only answer that I could find for myself. Art is man's distinctly human way of fighting death. Through art, man achieves immortality and in this immortality we find God.”

—  Jacques Lipchitz

Source: Jacques Lipchitz: The Artist at Work, 1966, p. 189

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Jacques Lipchitz photo
Jacques Lipchitz 10
American and French sculptor 1891–1973

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“All my life as an artist I have asked myself: What pushes me continually to make sculpture? I have found the answer — at least the answer for myself. Art is an action against death. It is denial of death.”

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Source: Jacques Lipchitz: The Artist at Work, 1966, p. 202

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Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

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“I find that people who believe in immortality—or at least those who say they do—are just as afraid of death as anybody else. I find that the most devout Christian weeps as bitterly above his dead, as the man who says that death ends all. You see the promises are so far away, and the dead are so near. Still, I do not say that man is not immortal; but I do say that there is nothing in the Bible to show that he is. The Old Testament has not a word upon the subject—except to show us how we lost immortality.”

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“Do not merely practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; it deserves that, for only art and science can exalt man to divinity.”

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Woody Allen photo

“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician
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“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

The joke about immortality also appears in On Being Funny (1975)
In an interview in Rolling Stone magazine from April 9, 1987, Allen said "Someone once asked me if my dream was to live on in the hearts of people, and I said I would prefer to live on in my apartment."
Source: The Illustrated Woody Allen Reader (1993)

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"The Immortal", § IV, in The Aleph (1949); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
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