I hate being called an ‚icon.‘ I just don’t like it. That’s all there is to it.

I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

There are some people who need to wear a label round their necks to show that they are Christians at all, or else we might mistake them for sinners, their actions are so like those of the ungodly.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

Everybody loves you when you’re six foot in the ground.

Work is that which you dislike doing but perform for the sake of external rewards. At school, this takes the form of grades. In society, it means money, status, privilege.

Frankly, if I could get away with not having to perform, I’d be very happy. It’s not my favorite thing to do.

Acting is a nice childish profession – pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

I don’t use blue. I don’t like it. It bugs me out. I hate it.

I don’t call up the press and say, ‚Look at me!‘

Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.

I don’t like politicians, and I don’t like politics. I definitely don’t want to be associated with any of them.

I feel Anglo-American.

I am not The Rock. I am Dwayne Johnson.

Sometimes I’m fascinated with how famous my work could be while I’m not so famous.

I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff.

My affection for Taiwan… is witnessed by everyone. My wife is Taiwanese and I am a son-in-law of Taiwan. I am half Taiwanese.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

I’ve watched a lot of people who became famous who completely change and I think it’s because they tend to believe all the hype that’s out there. I don’t think there’s that much hype about me.

I didn’t like the way I looked in pictures – when I saw myself on a digital camera, I was like, ‚Eesh.‘

America is not nearly done. We’re only in the beginning. Who knows who we will be? Who knows… what color we will be? It is all something that, maybe, our descendants – if they survive that long – will see.

I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

I’m almost like three people. There’s me the, Dolly, the person. There’s me, the star. And then there’s me, the manager.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

Above all, this country is our own. Nobody has to get up in the morning and worry what his neighbors think of him. Being a Jew is no problem here.

The longer a man’s fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.

You don’t know when you’re being watched. That’s one of the weird things about celebrity. It’s my least favorite part of acting, celebrity.

I’ve never been an intellectual but I have this look.

Thoughts are fine when you don’t confuse them with who you are, and then thoughts are not a problem. Thinking is a wonderful tool to create things in this world. It only becomes problematic and a source of suffering when you confuse thinking with who you are.

I like to hide behind the characters I play. Despite the public perception, I am a very private person who has a hard time with the fame thing.

I have always thought of myself as a Czechoslovak Catholic.

There are a lot of people who don’t know me and what I am all about.

Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives so as to please the fancy of men.

I do sometimes look back at things I’ve written in the past, and think, ‚I just don’t remember being the person who wrote that.‘

A fool is wise in his eyes.

Fame itself… doesn’t really afford you anything more than a good seat in a restaurant.

I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.

I really do feel part of America to my very bones; at the same time, I know that I come from somewhere else.

We’re constantly striving for success, fame and comfort when all we really need to be happy is someone or some thing to be enthusiastic about.

We’re so trendy we can’t even escape ourselves.

I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, ‚black feminist‘ does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it’s just… womanish.

Fame doesn’t fulfill you. It warms you a bit, but that warmth is temporary.

You don’t go to Notre Dame to learn something; you go to Notre Dame to be somebody.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, come cash.

I do not see myself as a celebrity or an icon or things like that… I have not really done anything.

A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

Everybody always laughs because I feel so much more comfortable with, like, a giant paper bag on my whole body and paint on my face. Sometimes I try really hard to take it all off. But inevitably what’s underneath is still not a straight edge. And I don’t think it ever will be.

I was an overnight sensation.

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.

Everyone, no doubt, remains first and foremost a man of his own country and continues to draw from it his motive force.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

I don’t really like to call myself a brand, and I don’t like to think of myself as a brand. I’m a singer, a songwriter, a musician and a performer. And an actress, and all the other things that I do. When you add it all together, some might call it a brand, but that’s not my focus.

A sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing.