To be immortal is to be misquoted. Repeatedly, and often at length. It is to have words stuffed into your mouth by total strangers. It is to be parodied and caricatured and have your face shoved onto T-shirts and your name bandied about and slapped on street signs.
It is to be taken out of context. It is to trend on Twitter for hours before everyone realizes you didn't say what they thought you said. It is to show up in Chevy commercials for no reason at all. When you are immortal, people sit down with you on imaginary panels and try to conjure up your thoughts on contemporary issues. They draw inept pastel portraits of you.
"The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living," W. H. Auden wrote on the death of Yeats.