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.

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.

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

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

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.

Those who know the joys and miseries of celebrities when they have passed the age of forty know how to defend themselves.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.