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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

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. 

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

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