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

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.

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

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

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

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