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.

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

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.

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

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.

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. 

I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one.

Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury—to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.

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

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

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