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

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

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

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.

He who treats another human being as divine thereby assigns to himself the relative status of a child or an animal.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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