Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

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

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

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

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!

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.

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

Reality is always the foe of famous names.

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.

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.

A woman’s greatest glory is to be little talked about by men, whether for good or ill.

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