I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

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

Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted.

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

Men are generally more pleased with a widespread than with a great reputation.

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experienced, but that’s not where I live.

Avoid the talk of men. For talk is mischievous, light, and easily raised, but hard to bear and difficult to be rid of. Talk never wholly dies away when many people voice her: even talk is in some ways divine.

Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth. Suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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.

All people have the common desire to be elevated in honor, but all people have something still more elevated in themselves without knowing it.

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