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.

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

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.

Men are generally more pleased with a widespread than with a great reputation.

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

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

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

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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

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!

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.

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.