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.

If fame is only to come after death, I am in no hurry for it.

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.

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

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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!

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.

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

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

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

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