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

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

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 but the empty noise of madmen.

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

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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

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