Selected fame quotes

1. The physicists say that I am a mathematician, and the mathematicians say that I am a physicist. I am a completely isolated man and though everybody knows me, there are very few people who really know me.

2. In my life, I don't need to have my face plastered everywhere. It's not really something I want.

3. From the moment I leave my house or my hotel room, the public owns me. The public made Alice Cooper and I can't imagine ever turning my back on my fans.

4. I realized that anything to do with Fermat's Last Theorem generates too much interest.

5. If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.

6. My idea of a good picture is one that's in focus and of a famous person.

7. In these days a man is nobody unless his biography is kept so far posted up that it may be ready for the national breakfast-table on the morning after his demise.

8. They laughed at Edison and Einstein, but somehow I still feel uncomfortable when they laugh at me.

9. Why is my autograph so little in demand, except on checks?

10. If I blow my nose, it gets written all over the world.

11. I was the Marlon Brando of my generation.

12. In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star.

13. Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition.

14. We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to.

15. I handle fame by not being famous...I'm not famous to me.

16. Sometimes girls write me. One girl in Yugoslavia sent me a whole slew of love letters. I don't know how she got my address. She was in a crowd watching me play. She says when I left there the stars fell out of the sky over Yugoslavia, or something like that.

17. I think with anybody who's doing well in the public eye or whatever, there's always gonna be a shift because people don't wanna see somebody happy all the time. And they're gonna try to take shots at people.

18. The cool thing about being famous is traveling. I have always wanted to travel across seas, like to Canada and stuff.

19. You just wait. I'm going to be the biggest Chinese Star in the world.

20. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.

21. This is Davey. I'm not special.

22. I'm an instant star. Just add water and stir.

23. Some people obtain fame, others deserve it.

24. He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

25. Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow.

26. Let the famous not denounce fame. Far from being empty and meaningless, it fills those it touches with divine power.

27. In the end all books are written for your friends. The problem after writing One Hundred Years of Solitude was that now I no longer know whom of the millions of readers I am writing for; this upsets and inhibits me. It's like a million eyes are looking at you and you don't really know what they think.

28. I would like for my books to have been recognized posthumously, at least in capitalist countries, where they turn you into a kind of merchandise.

29. I was asked the other day if I would be interested in the Nobel Prize, but I think that for me it would be an absolute catastrophe. I would certainly be interested in deserving it, but to receive it would be terrible. It would just complicate even more the problems of fame. The only thing I really regret in life is not having a daughter.

30. Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

31. The highest form of vanity is love of fame.

32. My dad was undeniably famous when I was a kid - he was on Wogan and Clive James and the radio every week, but as far as I was concerned he wasn't famous enough. My best friend was Ben Brooke-Taylor. His dad Tim was in The Goodies - that was famous.

33. To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.

34. Celebrities are invariably celebrity-mad, just as liars always believe liars.

35. People in my situation get to read about themselves whether they want to or not. It's generally wrong. Or oversimplified - which is sometimes useful.

36. Stardom can be a gilded slavery.

37. Legends die hard. They survive as truth rarely does.

38. The news of the discovery spread fast all over the country, and inquisitive enquiries mingled with congratulations from this moment became the daily programme.

39. Mommy, why does daddy cuss the TV and call it Howard?

40. Writers are idolized not because they love their fellow men, which is never a recommendation and in extreme instances leads to crucifixion, but because their self-love is in tune with current fears and desires, and in giving it expression they are speaking for an inarticulate multitude.

41. I never have sought the world; the world was not to seek me.

42. The only change is that baseball has turned Paige from a second class citizen to a second class immortal.

43. Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.

44. The downside of my celebrity is that I cannot go anywhere in the world without being recognized. It is not enough for me to wear dark sunglasses and a wig. The wheelchair gives me away.

45. First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.

46. The desire for glory clings even to the best men longer than any other passion.

47. Like many popular best-sellers, he was a very sad and solemn man who took himself too seriously and his art not seriously enough.

48. A famous person to themselves, they don't get up in the morning and think, I'm famous. I'm not famous to me. Famous is a perception.

49. Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag.

50. Mankind has always made too much of its saints and heroes, and how the latter handle the fuss might be called their final test.

51. Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.

52. A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow.

53. I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.

54. Success for some people, depends on becoming well-known; for others, it depends on never being found out.

55. 'You have babies at home. And you have a life. And if you don't, you have to realize that we're people and that we just need privacy and we need our respect. And those are things that you have to have as a human being.'

56. You know you've made it when you've been moulded in miniature plastic. But you know what children do with Barbie dolls- it's a bit scary, actually.

57. 'I think celebrities have an obligation to the public to not just sing or act.'

58. If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize at one effort the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own - the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple - a few plain words - 'My Heart Laid Bare.' But - this little book must be true to its title.

59. Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.

60. Princes are like heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration but no rest.

61. Certainly fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swoln, and drowns things weighty and solid.

62. 'I am loved by thousands, but I feel like the loneliest man in the world.'

63. Virtue has her heroes too As well as Fame and Fortune.

64. Of all the possessions of this life fame is the noblest; when the body has sunk into the dust the great name still lives.

65. The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak.

66. George Washington's brother, Lawrence, was the Uncle of Our Country.

67. Very few reputations are gained by unsullied virtue.

68. For the rest of my life, the one song that people will remember -- regardless -- is 'Conga' . . . I never get tired of singing it. It never gets old for me.

69. Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television.

70. Now, I think that I should have known that he was magic all along. I did know it - but I should have guessed that it would be too much to ask to grow old with and see our children grow up together. So now, he is a legend when he would have preferred to be a man.

71. 'Gun-wielding recluse gunned down by local police' isn't the epitaph I want. I am hoping for 'Witnesses reported the sound up to two hundred kilometers away' or 'Last body part finally located'.

72. The idea that I would ever end up on David Letterman or Jay Leno is horrifying. I am such a freak in comparison to most other twenty-five-year-old guys. I have no idea what other people are thinking. I'm not really in touch.

73. You know you're really famous when there's rumors about you being gay.

74. If I was ever a teen idol, I'd kill myself.

75. It's funny how most people love the dead. Once you're dead, you're made for life.

76. It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I don't appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It's the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison - it's garbage to me. I worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo.

77. I go to restaurants and the groups always play 'Yesterday.' I even signed a guy's violin in Spain after he played us 'Yesterday.' He couldn't understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't have gone from table to table playing 'I Am The Walrus.'

78. What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones, The labor of an age in piled stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a star-y-pointing pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?

79. And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

80. My life [is] a series of Hollywood orgies and Kabbalah center brunches with the cast of Friends. At least that's what my handlers tell me. I'm actually too valuable to live my own life and spend most of my days in a vegetable crisper to remain fake news anchor fresh.

81. Actors didn't use to be celebrities. A hundred years ago, they put the theaters next to the brothels. Actors were poor. Celebrities used to be kings and queens. Then the United States abolished monarchy, and now there's this coming together of show business and celebrity. I don't think it's healthy. I don't want to sound self-important, but all these celebrity shows and magazines - it comes from us, from Hollywood, from our country. We're the ones creating it. And I think it works in close step with a lot of other bad things that are happening in the world. It promotes greed, it promotes being selfish and it promotes this ladder, where you're a better person if you have more money. It's not at all about the work itself. Don't get me wrong. I love movies. But this myth of celebrity has nothing to do with movies.

82. 'I honestly have no interest in celebrity whatsoever. If anything, I always cringe at it because it takes away from what I am, which is an actor who wants to be better and do better things.'

83. I'm a failure as a woman. My men expect so much of me, because of the image they've made of me - and that I've made of myself - as a sex symbol. They expect bells to ring and whistles to whistle, but my anatomy is the same as any other woman's and I can't live up to it.

84. Fame is fickle and I know it. It has its compensations, but it also has its drawbacks and I've experienced them both.

85. I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I'm not feeling so well myself.

86. An actor's a guy, who if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening.

87. The ones who count are those persons who- though they may be of little renown- respond to and are responsible for the continuation of the living spirit.

88. 'I am in so many movies that are on TV at 2:00 a.m. that people think I am dead.'

89. As long as my face is on page one, I don't care what they say about me on page seventeen.'

90. I'm the most translated writer in the world, behind Lenin, Tolstoy, Gorki and Jules Verne. And they're all dead...

91. 'A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it.'

92. There's not a day in my life I'm not proud of being gay but I just wasn't ready for that attention to be placed on it. I remember being on Oprah. Well, not on Oprah. Near Oprah. She started saying, 'Now, Nathan, you got all those girlie moves going down in The Birdcage, where's all that coming from? You're so good at all that girlie stuff!'

93. Mel [Gibson] will always be Mad Max, and me, I will always be a number.

94. Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets' food is love and fame.

95. The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head like Heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow.

96. Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love.

97. Every hero becomes a bore at last.

98. Madonna's got one big choice. Take a couple of years off and become a human being.

99. 'Maybe the country doesn't pray for me like they do for Sachin Tendulkar, but I know I'm on a good wicket as well.'

100. Oblivion is not to be hired: The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the Register of God, not in the record of man.