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

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.

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

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

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.

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

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

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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

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

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!

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

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