“I'd had people say, 'You'll enjoy being famous for a week, and you'll never enjoy it again'. But I don't think I had that week. I may have been working and missed that moment.”
Fame looks different from the inside than the outside. These quotes come from and about well-known figures, exploring celebrity, recognition, legacy, and the question of whether being remembered is really all it is cracked up to be.
“But I didn't ask to have somebody nose around in my private life. I didn't even ask to be famous. All I asked was to be able to earn a living making people laugh.”
“I'd had people say, 'You'll enjoy being famous for a week, and you'll never enjoy it again'. But I don't think I had that week. I may have been working and missed that moment.”
“Duke Ellington was famous for hs very original harmonic patterns.”
“A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.”
“There's the famous thing that the A&R man from the record company is supposed to do: He's supposed to come into the studio and listen to the songs you've been recording and then say, 'Guys, I don't hear any singles.' And then everybody falls into a terrible depression because you have to write one.”
“I love being famous - it's phenomenal.”
“I don't feel famous and I didn't want my autobiography to be like a Paris Hilton story.”
“I love being famous. It's almost like being white.”
“But I didn't ask to have somebody nose around in my private life. I didn't even ask to be famous. All I asked was to be able to earn a living making people laugh.”
“Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.”
“Whenever you're the child of a famous person, you get judged in odd ways because of that.”
“I would have been very happy just working from job to job, paying my rent one movie at a time. I never wanted to be this famous. I never imagined this life for myself.”
“I made my living being 20 or 30 pounds heavier than the average model. And that's where I got famous.”
“Major success feels a bit like a coronation. Like I'd become a king. I was one of the most famous people in the world, loved and hated in equal measure. I couldn't see anything bad with it. It made me a happy person.”
“I definitely wanted to be an actor. I didn't want to be on TV, I didn't want to be famous, I didn't want to be anyone in particular I just wanted to do it. I see young people now who look at magazines, or American Idol and their goal is to have that lifestyle - to have good handbags, or go out with cute guys from shows, or whatever. But I definitely wanted to be an actor.”
“I don't have famous neighbours and if I did, I'd avoid them. I don't live the jet-set.”