“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

Pushkin’s dramatic life

RUSSIA’s national poet, the creator of one of the world’s most famous and tragic love stories, Aleksandr Pushkin, is the subject of the latest talk by Graham Fawcett at Sladers Yard arts centre, West Bay, on Thursday 9th February at 7.30pm.

Pushkin is revered in the West via the Russian composer Tchaikovsky as the creator of Eugene Onegin, one of the great love stories of all time. He also wrote the story that became Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, and provided the creative inspiration of other operas and plays.

In his talk Graham Fawcett will describe Pushkin’s dramatic life – one in which passionate love, a beautiful wife and outspoken political views brought trouble and retribution worthy of his own writings, including exile and a duel.

Fawcett will also explore the extraordinary quality of Pushkin’s poetry and the range of works less well-known (in the West) but arguably every bit as brilliant, innovative and transcendent.

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Pushkin’s dramatic life