“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

Gormley sculpture at Roche Court

THE New Art Centre, the contemporary art gallery at Roche Court, Winterslow near Salisbury, has a major sculpture by Antony Gormley.

The large cast iron piece, Before, stands in airy woodlands full of bluebells in the beautiful grounds surrounding the main building.

Gormley (b.1950) is one of the world’s most eminent sculptors. After studying at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1968 to 1971, he attended St Martin’s School of Art and the Slade School of Art to complete his studies in sculpture.

His public commissions include the Angel of the North, erected in 1998; and the installation Another Place on Crosby Beach, Liverpool. As well as winning the Turner Prize in 1994, he was elected Royal Academician in 2003, and knighted in 2014.

His work is held in distinguished international public and private collections, including: Tate, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Stadt Kassel and Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany; Hakone Open-Air Museum, Japan; Moderna Museet, Stockholm and Museum of Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles.