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. 

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

Avoid the talk of men. For talk is mischievous, light, and easily raised, but hard to bear and difficult to be rid of. Talk never wholly dies away when many people voice her: even talk is in some ways divine.

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

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

I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

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

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