“Fame itself … doesn’t really afford you anything more than a good seat in a restaurant.”
– David Bowie

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
– Henry David Thoreau

“I’m shy, paranoid, whatever word you want to use. I hate fame. I’ve done everything I can to avoid it.”
Johnny Depp

“If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I’m still waiting, it’s all been to seduce women basically.”
– Jean-Paul Sartre

“There’s no difference between fame and infamy now. There’s a new school of professional famous people that don’t do anything. They don’t create anything.”
– Ricky Gervais

“Fame doesn’t fulfill you. It warms you a bit, but that warmth is temporary.”
– Marilyn Monroe

“The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well, and doing well whatever you do without thought of fame. If it comes at all it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Fame hit me like a ton of bricks.”
– Eminem

“If you come to fame not understanding who you are, it will define who you are.”
– Oprah Winfrey

“I think I understand what military fame is – to be killed on the field of battle and have your name misspelled in the newspapers.”
– William Tecumseh Sherman

“Fame was thrilling only until it became gruelling. Money was fun only until you ran out of things to buy.”
– Gloria Swanson

“What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little.”
– Lord Byron

“A life without fame can be a good life, but fame without a life is no life at all.”
– Clive James

“Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, and now that, and changes name as it changes direction.”
– Dante Alighieri

Thoughts on fame

Crown Matrimonial at Yeovil

AS our new King settles into the role for which he was born, and for which he waited more than seven decades, the new play at Yeovil’s Swan Theatre recalls the series of events that led to his grandfather becoming King, and consequently his mother becoming Queen.

Royce Ryton’s Crown Material, at the Swan from 10th to 15th July, tells the fascinating story of Edward VIII’s abdication. It is set in Marlborough House between 1936 and 1945, and focuses on the private family drama of the man who chose the “woman I love” over his royal destiny, and eventually leading to the abdication. His younger brother became George VI and his older daughter, Elizabeth, would become our longest-reigning monarch, a role she was not born to, but fulfilled with dignity, compassion, skill and diplomacy.

First performed in 1972, Crown Matrimonial is an engrossing and moving study of a major constitutional crisis and an overwhelming issue of private and public conflict.

The Swan production is directed by Robert Graydon. Curtain up is at 7.45pm.

Pictured: Mark :Payne, the Swan Theatre chairman, takes the leading role as the lawyer Walter Monckton KC.