When I came to New York, I began to meet the people who became the most famous artists of our time. I was insecure about my own level of ability, I didn't know whether I could compete with these people and, at the same time. I was wondering what is this anyway?

I was a subject of ridicule and lectures about the basics of crystallography. The leader of the opposition to my findings was the two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling, the idol of the American Chemical Society and one of the most famous scientists in the world.

You become world famous, and you sit with kings and queens, and then your first job is just a job. You can't go back to living the way you did before because you've been taken out of one setting and shown the other. That becomes a struggle and makes you struggle.

I am the most well-adjusted human being I know. I started out this investigation as a very happy man with a great career. I've got the life people dream about: I am rich, I am famous, I've got a fabulous marriage to an absolutely, spell-bindingly brilliant woman.

And to me, fame is not a positive thing. The idea of being famous is a lot better than the reality. It's fantastic when you go to premieres and people cheer you, but it's not real. And it's totally not my approach to get my name on a club door just because I can.

People get a little sidelined thinking that fame and fortune is going to bring them happiness, peace and contentment in their lives. Everyone thinks they want to be famous until the paparazzi are in their face, and then they're asking, 'Just give me some privacy.'

A lot of people are like, 'So you want to be famous.' And I'm like, 'No, I want to be good at my craft. I don't care about fame, I don't care if I even ever make it. As long as people know what I am as an actress in this business, I'm set for my career right now.'

Part of being famous is offering up this blank screen upon which people can project everything, and it's a sacred act, putting yourself out there, in a way that lots of celebrities aren't steeled for; they're not prepared for the degree to which people define them.

My high-school coach Tony Reginelli was kind of famous for 'Reggie-isms,' kind of like 'Yogi-isms.' He always said if you want to be a good quarterback, when sprinting left you want to be amphibious and throw left-handed. I told him, 'You mean ambidextrous, coach?'

I was a little boy singing sad songs, about 9 or 10 years old in the woods. I listened to my voice coming back to me. It was as high as you could go. I dreamed of being famous as a singer when I was on those cotton fields. I wanted to see the world and meet people.

I don't care to be famous. But at the same time, you look at all the role models these little girls have, and they don't have anyone to look up to. I mean, it's weird, but if I just hid out and didn't let myself be known, who would they look up to instead, you know?

I did grow up next door to Steve McQueen, who was a very famous movie star at the time, but as a kid it didn't impress me. We always had great fun with him. He would take us out on Sundays on his motorcycles, riding around in the desert; he was like a second father.

I kept saying that I'd never live in L.A., and I didn't think I would. But that's where the work is, and I ended up making a lot of friends there, and my old friends moved out to Los Angeles too. And also, I think when you're famous, its hard to live in a small town.

A lot of producers get famous because they decide to be superstars for their own reasons, but I'm inspired by Timbaland and Pharrell and Swizz Beatz 'cause they're doing things that are so different. I like how they're introducing ideas I never would have thought of.

I seem to be able to go from part to part without being recognised, which I like. When I was little, I resented it with every fibre of my being when Ma was recognised. Another way of looking at celebrity, though, is it's being famous for being brilliant at something.

The year after Russell retired, in the famous seventh game of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden, Willis Reed, the New York Knicks center, limped onto the court against the Los Angeles Lakers, inspiring his team and freezing Chamberlain into a benign perplexity.

I've interviewed presidents and royalty, rock stars and movie stars, famous generals and captains of industry; I've had front row seats at Super Bowls, World Series, and Olympic Games; my books have been on best-seller lists, and my marriage is a long-running success.

The most common form of giantism is a condition called acromegaly, and acromegaly is caused by a benign tumor on your pituitary gland that causes an overproduction of human growth hormone. And throughout history, many of the most famous giants have all had acromegaly.

I don't think it's anything you ever get used to... for many years, I could never sort of put my name in the same sort of category as the word 'famous' or anything like that. And I just found it very uncomfortable... if you get used to it, then something must be wrong.

I don't really even go out that much now, except to walk my dogs, because I don't want to be recognised. I used to be a really friendly person, and now I just want to be invisible. I liked myself much more before I got famous. I was much friendlier and had more energy.

For me, growing up, the downside of it was that as a kid you don't want to stand out. You don't want to have a famous father let alone get a job because of your famous father, you know? But I'm a product of nepotism. That's how I got my foot in the door, through my dad.

There's so many things I want to do. I want to work with great filmmakers, great actors, great scripts. And there's no reason for me to do anything short of that, because I'm 24, I don't have a family, I don't need to make tons of money, and I'm not dying to get famous.

Much has been written about Trump's style of speech, which linguists have said is often unintelligible yet deeply compelling. Orwell's famous 1946 essay, 'Politics and the English Language,' centers on the use of abstract words, often by politicians, to obscure reality.

I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.

What is it we want out of travel? Is it to take snapshots of ourselves in front of famous monuments, surrounded by other tourists? To eat unfamiliar food chosen from unintelligible menus? To earn frequent-flier miles? No. It's to glimpse what life is like somewhere else.

Nevada is a small state. I think we're doing well trying to diversify and grow and understanding that it takes time. We're going to have to continue to do that while continuing to support the thing that we're most famous for, being the entertainment capital of the world.

It's hard for me to just say, 'Wow, this is amazing - I'm famous. I'm living the dream.' I sit there and think, 'I'm scared - this can go away tomorrow.' My dad always says that I'm a tortured soul because I'm never pleased; I never feel like I deserve what I've achieved.

I've never been overwhelmed with a desire to become famous. It's not that I didn't want to have my work appreciated, but for some reason - maybe it's because my father disapproved of almost everything I did - in some secret place in my being was a desire to avoid success.

I'm not comfortable being around too many people. I don't like being out in public too much. I don't like going to bars. I don't like doing celebrity stuff. So most of the characters I play are people who don't always feel comfortable beyond their small circle of friends.

The Galapagos Islands are probably the most famous wildlife-watching destination in the world. And no wonder - it's almost impossible to exaggerate the sheer spectacle of the place that provided inspiration for Charles Darwin's ground-breaking theory of natural selection.

I know I am in a band that is famous, and my private life is famous. I get it, and it's fine. Even when I grew up in a village, people wanted to know who was going to the dance with whom, and I understand, but I think if I engage with it too much, it won't be that healthy.

I always thought it was strange when these artists like Kurt Cobain or whoever would get really famous and say, 'I don't understand why this is happening to me.' There is a mathematical formula to why you got famous. It isn't some magical thing that just started happening.

To put it simply - you know, a lot of people believe that the benefit of this job is fame and fortune. I believe that you pay for the fortune through the fame. I don't buy into the notion that being famous is somehow a good thing, or an exciting thing, or a wonderful thing.

I went to a masterclass with Jonathan Pryce who said that a successful actor is not a famous actor, it's an actor who acts. And I have been incredibly fortunate to have worked constantly from the moment I left drama school, so I achieved what I set out to do. I am an actor.

I love whimsy. My mother was a word person, a real quipster. She was famous in the 1950s for being a contester in Utah: 25 words or less. My bicycle, our hi-fi... in 1959, she won $15,000 from Remington-Rand for writing about a shaver. She was a farm girl from South Dakota.

The bad thing about being a famous comedian is that every now and then someone approaches me to tell an old joke. Don't tell me jokes - I have that. People also say the weirdest things, sometimes sarcastic things, and even evil things. They like to provoke to get a reaction.

On the other hand, when I give it closer thought, I realize I'm not enough of a dictator to conduct an orchestra because it requires a pretty awful person. When you read these biographies of famous conductors, they are all awful people who fail in their private relationships.

I don't like a girl on social media, when you have an open inbox, answering questions from dudes left and right every day. What's the point? It's like having your number all out. Everybody think they're famous when they get 100,000 followers on Instagram and 5,000 on Twitter.

I didn't grow up thinking I'd be a decorator. Design is my greatest passion, and it naturally just pulled me down the path. Same with TV. Being famous or having a show was never the motivation. I got a call and was swept up by the challenge of that first small space redesign.

It's quite a famous story that takes place on Christmas Eve, and the Germans, French, and Scottish are trying to make peace one night and they bury their dead and they play football. I play a German opera singer, in German, which I never have so I am really excited about that.

I'm in my father's car at age 9 or 10 crying to Leonard Cohen's 'Famous Blue Raincoat,' thinking that you could write nearly a love letter to a man who betrayed you by having an affair with your wife. I was thinking how wonderful and pure music can be for explaining situations.

I sang 'Nessun Dorma' twice with Pavarotti, and he told me he'd heard 'Smoke' about five or six times, and every time was different. He was so jealous because if he deviated one jot from the traditional interpretation of the famous arias, he'd be crucified. We have the freedom.

I'm always so amazed by which performances work really, really well and which ones don't. But I think it's just mostly, 'She's Out Of My League,' so many people saw that movie on DVD and on the plane. Just millions of people saw that movie. That's the reason I'm somewhat famous.

My father was the doyen of the divorce barristers. He was an extremely erudite and very famous divorce barrister. So that, when I was a little boy in the nursery, instead of a story like 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' I used to get 'The Duchess and the Seven Correspondents.'

I can read a crowd pretty well. I know what to play and know how to keep it interesting for them and for myself as well. Most of the other DJs are more like producers so they become famous because they make hits and then they start DJ-ing. But I'm more from the other way around.

I don't think I'll ever feel as famous or as popular as I felt when I was a 17-year-old soccer player in Modle. Only about 20,000 people live there and 12,000 of them come to every game. Running onto the pitch each week was just the most fantastic feeling. Nothing can beat that.

Donors want to meet famous people, and getting a high profile draw for a fundraiser is one way to boost both the crowd and the cash. It's why the president and the vice president are always in demand. These folks are in demand because people around the country want to meet them.

I worked at a hot dog place, a bagel place, the Jersey Store and the hottest fashion joint around. I was getting too famous to work there anymore. I was almost showing up as a joke. I made $2,000 on my show the previous night and I'm going to go shopping during my five-hour shift.

I do probably come down a little hard on a group of people I call the 'blue chip gays.' I mean people who have managed to become very, very famous and are still very famous partly through staying in the closet, like Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Susan Sontag, Harold Brodkey and others.

Everybody wants to be famous, but nobody wants to do the work. I live by that. You grind hard so you can play hard. At the end of the day, you put all the work in, and eventually it'll pay off. It could be in a year, it could be in 30 years. Eventually, your hard work will pay off.

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