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

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

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.

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

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

Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury—to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.

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

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

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!

If fame is only to come after death, I am in no hurry for it.

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.

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

There lurks in every human heart a desire of distinction which inclines every man first to hope and then to believe that nature has given him something peculiar to himself.