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. 

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

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.

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

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

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

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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

A woman’s greatest glory is to be little talked about by men, whether for good or ill.

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.

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

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