I don’t call up the press and say, ‚Look at me!‘

I like to think of Everest as a great mountaineering challenge, and when you’ve got people just streaming up the mountain – well, many of them are just climbing it to get their name in the paper, really.

I wanted to have the adoration of John Lennon but have the anonymity of Ringo Starr. I didn’t want to be a frontman. I just wanted to be back there and still be a rock and roll star at the same time.

I always like to create things that get attention. It used to be a problem when I wasn’t famous. Now, I can do whatever I want and people have to accept it.

I think sometimes celebrities get so big, they’re not reachable.

I like to hide behind the characters I play. Despite the public perception, I am a very private person who has a hard time with the fame thing.

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, come cash.

You can’t reverse fame. You can lose all the money, but you’ll never lose people knowing you.

A lot of the problems I had with fame I was bringing on myself. A lot of self-loathing, a lot of woe-is-me. Now I’m learning to see the positive side of things, instead of, like, ‚I can’t go to Kmart. I can’t take my kids to the haunted house.‘

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.

See, ‚A Time to Kill‘ was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.

Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.

The postman wants an autograph. The cab driver wants a picture. The waitress wants a handshake. Everyone wants a piece of you.

I met my husband before I became a star, and he doesn’t care about any of it.

Becoming famous was never what I wanted to do. There’s a lot of things that come with fame – it’s what people in the limelight have to do.

I wanted to be famous for my music and my talent, and I always wished I could cut it out when I left the stage.

Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.

‚Fame‘ exhausts me.

Because you know when you first become famous, you start walking a little different because people are staring at you.

Fame is ultimately about the cycles of desire and how to do away with them or manage them well.

Years ago, when I first started being a big star, I had fans that were fanatical. It was when ‚Jolene‘ was a big hit.

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

I was probably the first footballer ever to have a pop-star profile, and my agent was right when he said we could put my name on stair rods and sell them to people in bungalows.

I’m over being a pop star. I don’t wanna be a hot girl. I wanna be iconic. And I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. I feel like I’m highly respected, which is more important than any award or any amount of records. And I feel like there comes a point when being a pop star is not enough.

People think I’m a celebrity. I’m not a celebrity.

Only the public can make a star. It’s the studios who try to make a system out of it.

If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I’m still waiting, it’s all been to seduce women basically.

I’ve been talked about by a lot better people than the general public.

When I was a kid, I never did funny things to get attention. I was never a funny person. I was never, like, ‚Oh, wow. I could say this some day on stage.‘

Before I was famous, when I was just working in Gilbert’s Lodge, everything was moving in slow motion.

If you were to ask me to choose between democratic values and wealth, power, prosperity and fame, I will very easily and without any doubt choose democratic values.

To be famous, in fact, one has only to kill one’s landlady.

Even as a child, Muhammad Ali got perverse pleasure out of being different. He liked the attention it got him, but most of all he just liked being himself: odd and independent.

I knew no one who’d ever been in the public eye.

I don’t like Los Angeles. The people are awful and terribly shallow, and everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to play the game. I’m from New York. I will kill to get what I need.

If you modestly enjoy your fame you are not unworthy to rank with the holy.

Sometimes I’m fascinated with how famous my work could be while I’m not so famous.

In the book of Gaga, fame is in your heart, fame is there to comfort you, to bring you self-confidence and worth whenever you need it.

The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing.

How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.

The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves – and the better the teacher, the better the student body.

What I’ve learned is that you really don’t need to be a celebrity or have money or have the paparazzi following you around to be famous.

I have no use for people who throw their weight around as celebrities, or for those who fawn over you just because you are famous.

With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else’s ideas about you, but what’s important is how you feel about yourself – for survival and living day to day with what comes up.

In karting, in the European races, you have the cameras and the film crews and you do interviews. At around 13 I’d already started doing bit of media and it just increases more and more with every level you take, especially when you get into cars – and when you hit F1 it’s an even higher step up. It’s something you get used to over time.

The ads all call me fearless, but that’s just publicity. Anyone who thinks I’m not scared out of my mind whenever I do one of my stunts is crazier than I am.

I don’t think I could think of a single thing that’s more isolating than being famous.

I wanted to use my fame and this face that everyone knows so well to help uplift and inspire people around the world.

I get really restless when I haven’t worked for a day and a half. I have a recurring dream that people are lined up next to my bed, waiting for autographs and taking pictures of me!

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: ‚Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.‘

The fact that my 15 minutes of fame has extended a little longer than 15 minutes is somewhat surprising to me and completely baffling to my wife.

We are often attracted to the wrong things, whether it be money, fame, or approval.

People at Facebook are fairly used to the press being nice to us or not nice to us.

I think that when you are famous every weakness is exaggerated.

One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda.

I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff.

Getting recognized is insane. It just blows my mind. Like, someone who you don’t know at all can just be like, ‚Oh my God – are you Billie?‘

Some people are very good at being ‚stars‘ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.