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

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

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

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

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

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

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

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!

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

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.

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.

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