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

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.

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

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.

They are trying to make me into a fixed star. I am an irregular planet.

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.

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

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.

Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, now that, and changes names as it changes in direction.

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

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