What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it, and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

How sweet it is to have people point and say, “There he is.”

They are trying to make me into a fixed star. I am an irregular planet.

We all have a contract with the public—in us they see themselves, or what they would like to be.

And what will history say of me a thousand years hence?

I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one.

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

Most authors seek fame, but I seek for justice—a holier impulse than ever entered into the ambitious struggles of the votaries of that fickle, flirting goddess.

What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

Now there is fame! Of all—hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public—fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation by God of the artist. It is sad. It is true.