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

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.

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.

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!

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Reality is always the foe of famous names.