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

If I had time, I would become timeless.

Missing what most of the time? The babbling faceless agora, the fame, the parties, the pop of flash bulbs? The lovers, the gaiety, the champagne? The solitude carved out of celebrity, poring over charts by a single lamp on a wide desk in a venerable hotel? Room service, coffee before dawn? The company of one...

I’m old enough to have lived in a country where, if you were willing to work hard, you could have a fairly nice life. You could support your family, and even get a shot at owning your own home. But you never thought you’d get a swimming pool. Now culture has hypnotised people into thinking...

I have arrived more definitely than any other painter during his lifetime; honours shower upon me from every side; artists pay me compliments on my work; there are many people to whom my position must seem enviable…. But I don’t seem to have a single real friend!

Many of the younger generation know my name in a vague way and connect it with grotesque inventions, but don’t believe that I ever existed as a person. They think I am a nonperson, just a name that signifies a tangled web of pipes or wires or strings that suggest machinery. My name to them...

Try not to be a man or woman of success, but rather a man or woman of inspiration. If you’re successful, they will flock to you for money or fame, but if you’re inspirational, they will flock to you because they love your soul and how you change theirs.

Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name.

Money isn’t the solution to your problems. It only lets you carry your unhappiness around in style.

Sometimes I wish I weren’t famous.

I was for sure not prepared for fame when it happened.

I will not be “famous,” “great.” I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one’s self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.

While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone...

For the ancient Greeks, who lacked our social media, the only way to achieve mass duplication of the details of one’s life in the apprehension of others was to do something wondrously worth the telling. Our wondrous technologies might just save us all the personal bother. Kleos is a tweak away.

Kleos is sometimes translated as “acoustic renown” the spreading renown you get from people talking about your exploits. It’s a bit like having a large Twitter following.

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

She had probably referred to herself as Mrs. Scott Landon less than half a dozen times in all the years of her married life, and never once during the twenty-six months of her widowhood. It wasn’t hard to understand why she had done so now. It was what Scott called “the fame-card,” and he himself...

The longest wave is quickly lost in the sea.

I was uncomfortable with that kind of fame when you’re in the tabloids every day.

Fame for the lames, fortune for the brains.

As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain sublime assurance of success, but as soon as honied words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies.

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

What is fame? Fame is but a slow decay, Even this shall pass away

Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.

Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue?

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.

The meaning of life in western secular society is to be successful. So many people are success mad and they are encouraged to reach for something and have so called “worthwhile goals”. Money, fame, power, good looks, possessions are the indicators of success and the media and advertising companies exploit this. People are conditioned to...

€7,500, first-class, everything—and all that for 40 minutes selling them some old stuff.

Thanks for comin out, God bless you, good night…What of fame?Everyone knows your face, the world screams your nameAnd never again, are you alone..

For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men. Make them your examples, and, esteeming courage to be freedom...

Lao Tzu’s first paragraph in the book “Tao Te Ching” is that the Tao that can be told is not the absolute Tao.Lao Tzu has his own logic, the logic of paradoxes, the logic of life.To understand Tao, you will have to create eyes.Lao Tzu believes in the unity of opposites, because that is how...

The medium of response in America is fame; that’s how a person that bounces a ball can make millions of dollars, and a school teacher with no fame makes $35,000.

I want to change the world, and do something valuable and beautiful. I want people to remember me before I’m dead, and then more afterwards.

I’ve heard many say “I’ll sell my soul to the Devil”in hopes of gaining money, power or fame.Why do they think that they have that much worth over any other person?And the Devil if there is one wouldn’t simply wait for them to condemn themselves on their own

I have a notion that gamblers are as happy as most people, being always excited; women, wine, fame, the table, even ambition, sate now and then, but every turn of the card and cast of the dice keeps the gambler alive — besides one can game ten times longer than one can do any thing...

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

The life given us, by nature is short; but the memory of a well-spent life is eternal.

Your name still rings a bell when you say something good, not by causing catastrophe in a bid to sound more interesting.

With our film, we were trying to show a group of people who have experienced degrees of fame and it’s either been fleeting or they’re trying to regain it.

Roots cannot grow into trees if there are no supernatural elements in the soil. Man cannot grow wealthy and famous if he doesn’t contribute to either, the good or evil.

Though you can get smart from reading everything that a smart person writes, you cannot get famous from reading about everything that a famous person does or is said to have done.

[Rachel McAdams is quietly and cheerfully philosophical when it comes to talking about her impending fame. Now that her recent Wedding Crashers is a bona fide hit, the beautiful actress, back on screen in Wes Craven’s Red Eye, says she is happy to take it as it comes.] I suppose there is a little bit...

Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.

To put an arrogant ‘famous’ singer in her place: pretend to be deaf.

One can’t work/by limelight.//A bowlful/right at/one’s elbow//produces no/more than/a baleful/glow against/the kitchen table.//The fruit purveyor’s/whole unstable/pyramid//doesn’t equal/what daylight did.

The majority of pop stars are complete idiots in every respect.

[Patten also is a valuable resource for players and coaches alike. Gibbs, a Hall of Fame coach with three Super Bowl wins, routinely asks him about how the Patriots — winners of three of the last four Super Bowls — operate, with questions about practice drills, training camp or anything else that comes up.] He’s...

The drying up a single tear has more – Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore

Creativity is when a stupid clever soul gets up from bed and does amazing things that makes the world think he is wise.

I missed the crowds in those big stadiums, the flashbulbs, the roaring cheers – the majesty of the whole thing. I missed it bitterly. So did my father. We shared a thirst to return; unspoken, undeniable.