Samuel Johnson Quotes

All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.

Out of all artists, authors are the least trained for the spotlight. Wanting attention isn't a requisite part of the package.

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

All fame ever does for you is get attention for the work you really want to do.

Its only when you are a great actor and are recognised for your good work that you become famous. Unless you are in the news for the wrong reasons!

I've never seen anybody win the game in the media. But at the same time, I understand what it could do for you, if you wanted to be someone who talks a lot.

The line between greatness and obscurity is very, very small.

If you're a musician or actor, you know that if you're successful, some level of fame goes along with that. You're prepared. But how often does that happen to a programmer?

Know that the amount of criticism you receive may correlate somewhat to the amount of publicity you receive.

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

I never had any real expectations about what sort of success I would have or all the publicity.

Fame is one of the potential hazards of this job, but I really just want to make movies. I want to be respected, sure. Who doesn't? But famous-famous? I just don't care about it. And if you genuinely don't give a damn about that stuff, you really are free.

But the thing is, I was never looking at a strategic way of gaining fame. That's not why I'm doing this.

The soundtrack of O Brother is the most publicity I've gotten. I don't feel that I have lost any of my old fans, but I have gained new ones.

People who have achieved a public voice find it a mixed bag.

It's the price of success: people start to think you're omnipotent.

If you do big things they print your face, and if you do little things they print only your thumbs.

Success listens only to applause. To all else it is deaf.

Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.

The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them.

Fame necessarily isn't really tied to success at all. Fame is just being recognized for doing what you do, whether it's good or bad. Osama bin Laden was famous.

Failure is the most terrible thing in our business. When we fail, the whole world knows about it.

Nothing recedes like success.

This is an imperfect world, as actors, athletes, priests and presidents soon discover. Writers have known this from the day they read their first review.

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent. Fame and censure with a tether / By fate are always linked together.