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

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.

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.

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.

And what will history say of me a thousand years hence?

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

I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one.

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

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!

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.

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

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.