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

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

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

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

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

I won’t be happy till I’m as famous as God.

When I do a show, the whole show revolves around me, and if I don’t show up, they can just forget it.

I am sick and tired of publicity. I want no more of it. It puts me in a bad light. I just want to be forgotten.

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

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

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.

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

Happy is the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame—to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell!