Jay-Z Quotes

When you're in a public profession like I was, and you stop doing it like I did, people think you're either crazy or dead.

The press made me something I really wasn't and I tried to live up to what they made me.

I remember saying in college that I would never do commercials.

With the whole supermodel thing, even when you're not really modeling anymore, people still call me that. And I'm like '... retired.'

I think you can find yourself on one of these shows for a long period of time and think that all you'll ever be able to do is that character. Certainly people think of you that way.

What I hope is I'll eventually be seen as an actual individual, not as some abstraction - an art dealer running a museum.

I feel very strong as an individual, but as a famous footballer I know I am prone to certain things. All the media have a continuous interest for me. It varies from once a year to every day interest.

What changes with fame is the perceptions of the individual rather than the individual.

Yeah I grew up in the public eye. I became a man in the public eye, which is kind of a bizarre thing to come to terms with. Now I'm in my late 20s and I was in my early 20s when I became recognizable. But I think 'Moneyball' represents a very strong shift in my career and becoming an adult and a man.

I know a lot of celebrities who are perfectly happy to put their name to something and then leave it at that because the money is good, but I need to have complete control over how something is going to look if my name is going to be attached to it.

When someone gets closely related to a character they play on TV, it's very hard to break that mold and go on to do something else.

People know you as an actor, and labels are so comfortable for people. That syndrome is always hard to get past.

Every time you do a movie, it's important for your career, your reputation.

I've been very aware with the fact that being in the public eye, being on TV, being cast on 'Total Divas,' I'm setting myself out there for criticism, but I have to know in my heart, what I know is right.

I don't want to be 'Brynn from 'The Voice'' forever.

Your goal as a candidate - define others before they can define you.

As far as fan perception, it's probably worse than it should be. I think it's getting better, but I think I still get perceived based on the things I did earlier in my career.

In the opening stage of most careers any attention is what you want, any attention is good attention, even if it's bad attention.

You're still being looked at as somebody who - it's a very complicated issue.

We are praised or blamed, as the one or the other may be expedient, for displaying to advantage our power of discernment.

I had my 15 minutes of being the new boy of pop, like lots of people before and after me. Overnight, everyone starts treating you differently, and perceives you differently.

Reputation being essentially contemporaneous, is always at the mercy of the Envious and the Ignorant. But Fame, whose very birth is posthumous, and which is only known to exist by the echo of its footsteps through congenial minds, can neither be increased nor diminished by any degree of wilfulness.

Oh, what the hell did I know? I went to the set the first day in full makeup and the director told me to take it off. So I did the film without makeup. I had nothing to do with anything I did. I never understood why I was so famous.

Tis hard to be wretched, but worse to be knowne so.

It is better to be seen as cruel than foolish.