Spoiler alert: Fame isn't all it's cracked up to be. That's the overriding message from these 30 author quotes, but it's probably worth bearing in mind that many didn't find fame until long after they'd shuffled off this mortal coil. So, maybe, pinch of salt?
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Oscar Wilde
"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Neil Gaiman
"Notoriety wasn't as good as fame, but was heaps better than obscurity."
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
(Penned with Terry Pratchett)
Socrates
"Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?"
Stephen King
"Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well."
Emily Dickinson
"Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate."
Fame is a fickle food
James Patterson
"We're famous" Iggy whispered so low that Fang could barely hear him.
"So's Swine Flu" Fang whispered back."
Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
Madeline Miller
"They never let you be famous and happy."
The Song of Achilles
Charles Bukowski
"When a writer is swayed with his fame and his fortune, you can float him down the river with the turds."
JACK KEROUAC
"Anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven."
On the Road
Erica Jong
"Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are."
J.D. Salinger
"Just because I'm choosy about what I want - in this case, enlightenment, or peace, instead of money or prestige or fame or any of those things - doesn't mean I'm not as egotistical and self-seeking as everybody else."
Franny and Zooey
J.G. Ballard
"A kind of banalisation of celebrity has occurred: we are now offered an instant, ready-to-mix fame as nutritious as packet soup."
The Atrocity Exhibition
Marcel Proust
"For although we know that the years pass, that youth gives way to old age, that fortunes and thrones crumble (even the most solid among them) and that fame is transitory, the manner in which—by means of a sort of snapshot—we take cognisance of this moving universe whirled along by Time, has the contrary effect of immobilising it."
Time Regained
mark Twain
"Fame is a vapour, popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion."
J.K. Rowling
"Fame is a fickle friend, Harry. Celebrity is as celebrity does. Remember that."
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Emily Brontë
"Riches I hold in light esteem,
And love I laugh to scorn,
And lust of fame was but a dream
That vanished with the morn."
The Complete Poems
Friedrich Nietzsche
"Some men are born posthumously."
The Anti-Christ
Vladimir Nabokov
"Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name."
Virginia Woolf
"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."
A Writer's Diary
Dr. Seuss
"Fame you'll be famous, as famous as can be, with everyone watching you win on TV, Except when they don't because sometimes they won't."
Oh, The Places You'll Go!
C.S.Lewis
"Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things."
The Great Divorce
Louisa May Alcott
"Simple, genuine goodness is the best capital to found the business of this life upon. It lasts when fame and money fail, and is the only riches we can take out of this world with us."
Little Men
Milan Kundera
"The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us."
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Henry David Thoreau
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."
Orson Scott Card
"That's what so many people didn't understand about life. The real world is the one within the walls of homes; the outside world, of careers and politics and money and fame, that was the fake world, where nothing lasted, and things were real only to the extent they harmed or helped people inside their homes."
Hidden Empire
Lionel Shriver
"In a country that doesn't discriminate between fame and infamy, the latter presents itself as plainly more achievable."
We Need to Talk About Kevin
H.G. Wells
"Things that would have made fame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do things too easily."
The Time Machine
Rainer Maria Rilke
"Fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.”
W.E.B. Du Bois
"The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame."
Arthur C. Clarke
"In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy."
Rama II
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