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.

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

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

Now there is fame! Of all—hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public—fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation by God of the artist. It is sad. It is true.

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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.

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

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

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

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. 

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

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