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

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.

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

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

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!

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

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

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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