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.

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.

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

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

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

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

All people have the common desire to be elevated in honor, but all people have something still more elevated in themselves without knowing it.

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

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.

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. 

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

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

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