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

Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, now that, and changes names as it changes in direction.

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.

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

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

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

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!

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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

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.

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

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

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