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.

If fame is only to come after death, I am in no hurry for it.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.