I think the promise of fame and what it holds to you as a child and dreaming of it is not what it is. What it is, I'm not complaining about, but it's just different than the reality you dreamed.
—Victor Hugo
It's going to come true like you knew it, but it's not going to feel like you think.
—William Shakespeare
I'm a bit of an abstract figure that people can project their fantasies on; it's pretty much what we all are, otherwise we wouldn't be stars, and people wouldn't be interested. But people project things on you that have nothing to do with what you really are, or they see a little something and then exaggerate it. And you can't really control that.
—Unknown
Famous I don't know about. It's hard to be famous and alive. I just want to play music every day and hear someone say, 'Thanks, that was great, here's some money, same time tomorrow, okay?
—Unknown
Popularity? It is glory's small change.
—Unknown
Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till by broad spreading it disperses to naught.
—Unknown
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.
—Robert Benchley
First you're an unknown, then you write one book and you move up to obscurity.
—Martin Myers
Anyone who works is a fool. I don't work—I merely inflict myself upon the public.
—Robert Morley
Fame warps your identity, metastasizes your anxieties, and hollows you out like a jack-o'-lantern. It's sparkly pixie dust that burns whatever it touches like acid.
—Elan Mastai in All Our Wrong Todays
Barnum was wrong—it's more like every 30 seconds.
—Unknown