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

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

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.

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

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

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

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. 

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

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

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

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

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

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.