What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.
It was complicated at Madrid. I was suspicious. The lack of recognition for Makelele over there scared me. I was scared it would happen to me. But I should have gone there. Today, I don't regret the career that I have had, but if I could have changed one thing, it would be that: to go to Madrid.
In the '80s, I was putting out an album virtually every year, I think mostly based on fear - that if I didn't, people would soon forget about me.
When I was young, I spent my days and nights trying to impress future generations. I spent them. They're gone. All because I was deathly afraid of being forgotten. And then came the regret. The worst things of all worst things.
I’m afraid I’ll be a book that no one reads. Music that no one listens to anymore. I’m afraid I’ll be abandoned like a movie playing in an empty theater.
Very idle is all curiosity concerning other people's estimate of us, and all fear of remaining unknown is not less so.
Theater people are always pining and agonizing because they're afraid that they'll be forgotten. And in America they're quite right. They will be.
Publicity gets more than a little tiring. You want it, you need it, you crave it, and you're scared as hell when it stops.
Men have solicitude about fame; and the greater share they have of it, the more afraid they are of losing it.
He that is pushing his predecessors into the gulf of obscurity, cannot but sometimes suspect, that he must himself sink in like manner, and, as he stands upon the same precipice, be swept away with the same violence.
Most artists are always fighting for their fame. They have that fear, like the saying goes, "out of sight, out of mind." They need to keep themselves out there. I have never had that fear. If I have any fear, it's not doing enough to reach people.
