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.

Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, now that, and changes names as it changes in direction.

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

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!

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

A woman’s greatest glory is to be little talked about by men, whether for good or ill.

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.

Those who know the joys and miseries of celebrities when they have passed the age of forty know how to defend themselves.

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

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

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.

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

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.