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.

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

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

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

All people have the common desire to be elevated in honor, but all people have something still more elevated in themselves without knowing it.

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.

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

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.

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experienced, but that’s not where I live.

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

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.