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

It is hard sometimes to always be at the centre of attention, but when you talk about me you also have to talk about the climate.

I’m not a star. I don’t feel I’m so great. So how can I make you feel great just because you’ve got my signature on a piece of paper?

If I’m a star, then the people made me a star.

I would never say I was an icon, but so many people have said I am, so I suppose I am. I mean, I can’t not be what everyone says I am. But I don’t feel like an icon.

I came to California and got signed at a young age. And it’s not like you see in the movies, where you start rubbing shoulders with Timbaland and Pharrell, and you become a giant pop star.

I was an overnight sensation.

I’ve always strived to be successful, not famous.

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

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.

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.

The challenge for me as an actor is if you become a celebrity, you don’t meet strangers anymore. And strangers are where we have our anonymity. And I believe it’s essential for the soul to be anonymous, especially if you’re going to be an actor.

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

Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.

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.

These critics with the illusions they’ve created about artists – it’s like idol worship. They only like people when they’re on their way up… I cannot be on the way up again.

I just hope people don’t get sick of us. I’m sick of us and I’m in Destiny’s Child.

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 get to hear the really good or the really bad things in the press, but I don’t read it. I can afford to say that because public opinion does not drive U2’s audience.

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

I’ve never had that much trouble with the paparazzi, but I don’t run the same circles that a lot of these people that do get hounded by the paparazzi.

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.

The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.

It confuses me and disappoints me when somebody says, ‚What does he do? What does he do?‘ My records are some of the biggest anthems ever. What do you think, they magically just appear? Obama walked out to my record.

We’re constantly striving for success, fame and comfort when all we really need to be happy is someone or some thing to be enthusiastic about.

Some artists are working to buy the mansion or whatever the element of fame must bear, but I spend all my money on my show.

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

‚Fame‘ exhausts me.

I’m an instant star. Just add water and stir.

I didn’t come to Hollywood. Hollywood came to me. A lot of people wish they could say the things I say. Everyone out here is so phony, it’s sickening.

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

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

It seems the only way to gain attention today is to organize a march and protest something.

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.

I hope when I’m dead I’ll be considered an icon, though.

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.

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

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.

Obama did organize a great large number of people and many enthusiastic people, what’s called in the press ‚Obama’s Army.‘ But the army is supposed to take instructions, not to implement, to introduce, develop programs and call on its own candidate to implement them. That’s critical.

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.‘

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.

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.

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

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.

I have to admit I’ve found myself doing the same things that a lot of other rock stars do or are forced to do. Which is not being able to respond to mail, not being able to keep up on current music, and I’m pretty much locked away a lot. The outside world is pretty foreign to me.

People want to act like they know celebrities. They want to see pictures. They want to know where you’re going. They want to hear you talk about your family.

People don’t realize that we, we meaning people in show business, have the same problems as everyone else. Money doesn’t change that. Fame doesn’t change that. Sometimes that brings on more problems. You know, it’s just a different kind of problems.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it’s their fault.

There was my name up in lights. I said, ‚God, somebody’s made a mistake.‘ But there it was, in lights. And I sat there and said, ‚Remember, you’re not a star.‘ Yet there it was up in lights.

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

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.

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

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.

Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability.

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

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

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

You know, fame is a funny thing, man, especially, you know, actors, musicians, rappers, rock singers, it’s kind of a lifestyle and it’s easy to get caught up in it – you go to bars, you go to clubs, everyone’s doing a certain thing… It’s tough.

Fame may go by and – so long, I’ve had you.

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.

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.