“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

Martha and George at Street

IN a world of tinsel and jingle bells, Edward Albee’s classic 1962 play of domestic misery on an American campus is a start contrast, but that’s what is on offer at Strode Theatre Studio in Street from 14th to 16th December.

Neil Howiantz directs the Strode Theatre Productions version of the play, which will be on the intimate Studio stage nightly at 7.15pm. He has cast Karen Trevis in the fearsome role of Martha the Principal’s daughter, opposite Rob Prince as her lecturer husband George. The story, told over the course of one night after a college party, unpeels the painful layers of their unhappy marriage, when new faculty member Nick (Will Vero) and his sensitive wife Honey (Eliane Morgan) come round for a nightcap.

This brilliant play is justifiably famous and its psychological insights are a timeless reminder that no matter how much we convince ourselves that “good mental health” is a “human right”, we have the capacity for endless pain and cruelty. It might not sound Christmassy, but if you want a break from pantomime and advertising pressure, there are still a few tickets left.

Pictured are Karen Trevis and Rob Prince in rehearsal.