“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

Swords into Ploughshares: Knives into Jewels

THE new exhibition at Make South West, the makers gallery at Bovey Tracey, is a potent and thought-provoking display of the response of 35 international artists to the challenge of transforming knives into works of art.

Swords into Ploughshares: Knives into Jewels, on at the Devon gallery until 13th May, is a touring exhibition curated by Professor Norman Cherry and Dauvit Alexander.

In this multi-disciplinary project, the curators have highlighted and examined the phenomenon of knife crime currently being experienced across Britain.

At the core of the project was an invitation to 35 international jewellery and metals artists to create new bodies of work by refashioning, repurposing, adapting, or otherwise transforming knives which have been surrendered to UK police.

Participating artists have come from all over the world, including Australia, the US, Estonia, Ireland, Germany, Mexico, Norway, Netherlands, Korea and Italy.

Image: Negotiating Heart to Knife Peacefully, and Creatively Housing Swords into Ploughshares by a Korean-American artist, Komelia Okim; quartet of images: Taavi Teevet, Cristina Filipe, Dauvit Alexander and Risto Tali.