Stephen Carter Quotes

The press frequently sneers at the hype devoted to a superstar, but the press itself is responsible for all the hype.

My relationship with the journalists who covered the campaign was complicated. I often hid from the critical eye of their cameras and their omnipresent digital recorders, wary of the critique implicit in every captured moment. But I also grew to respect and understand their passion for their work, their love for the journey we were sharing.

I am reading it [his press coverage] more and enjoying it less.

In terms of publicity and interviews, well, it's really hard in this modern world to keep a sense of mystery.

I've had journalists beg me to please say something negative about my estate.

As long as my face is on page one, I don't care what they say about me on page seventeen.

There's a weird cloud around you when you're recognizable. It was a brief window for me. I think you have to have a pathological need for attention of any type, negative or positive, to thrive in that kind of situation. And I only want compliments.

It's very hard not to let fame affect you because you are continually being told how good you are. After a while you begin to think there must be some truth in it because all those people can't be wrong.

People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher — a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.

Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth

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.

A dozen men in good suits and women in silk dresses will circulate smoothly among the reporters, spouting confident opinions. They won't be just press agents trying to impart a favorable spin to a routine release. They'll be the Spin Doctors, senior advisers to the candidates

When you interview celebrities, they're so guarded so many times, they can't reveal anything.

I get embarrassed when I go to an actor or actress's home and it's filled with pictures of them.

Any of us in the public eye must remember: Never, ever believe your own press, and pray to develop a hypersensitive gag reflex regarding your own importance.

Surrounded by high-paid publicity people and professional ego massagers, movie stars, like politicians, almost invariably come to believe that they are nicer, more charming, and more beloved than they appear to be to a casual observer, and that their stories about their careers are universally fascinating.

It's so vacuous, this job. You're constantly looking at pictures of yourself, talking about yourself. Then I come back home, and all my mates want to talk about is me because I've been hanging out with Elton John and stuff.

Maybe the press in Spain do not like me because I do not give interviews.

Just being in the industry that I'm in, you get people building up your ego - 'Oh, you guys are the best, you guys are gods.' So I started believing the hype - 'Yes, I am a god!'

I view myself as having an adversarial approach to the media.

Journalism and the news has become not only a means to debate but also to judge and deconstruct celebrity, the news story, and the emotional lives of political people.

If you allow fame to get the better of you, you become nuisance, a public nuisance, a nuisance as a friend, as a member of the family, a nuisance to yourself.

I don't go out of the way to create controversies, I know some actresses pay their publicist money to create a controversy, but I don't know why this happens to me.

If I was a singer who won those Grammys, I'd be gracing all the magazine covers... I barely got asked to do an interview.

You know, if you're going to be honest with yourself, you have to admit that you go into show business wanting people to talk about you and wanting everyone to know who you are. But that also means there are going to be a whole bunch of people who don't like you. No matter who you are. I'm sure there's somebody out there who doesn't like Betty White because she's short and has white hair.