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.

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

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

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.

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it, and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

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

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

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.

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

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.