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

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. 

All people have the common desire to be elevated in honor, but all people have something still more elevated in themselves without knowing it.

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

We all have a contract with the public—in us they see themselves, or what they would like to be.

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

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

He who treats another human being as divine thereby assigns to himself the relative status of a child or an animal.

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

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.

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

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.

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