Pursuing Fame Quotes

I've been wanting to sing for a long time. I've been singing all my life, and I've tried different record companies, but it seemed like - it was such a struggle and so hard to get out there. So, I said, 'I'm gonna go on American Idol and see how far it takes me.'

I came to Hollywood and nobody knew me. I was on a coupla TV shows.

Wanting to be an actor and wanting to be famous are different.

If you're going to go the way of 'American Idol,' then you better be able to do what you want musically, because just going for the fame will only keep you happy for so long.

Going to New York to do whatever - show business - it just seemed fun. It seemed fun to go to the big city and meet all kinds of different people and maybe be famous. It was just exciting. So I wasn't scared.

A lot of people come to Los Angeles and think that they're going to be famous, just like that.

OK, I've had a life of sort of success, some people know who I am but a lot of people don't. I feel the need to change that still.

If it's just a pastime, keep doing it because it's relaxing and to blow off some steam. But if you're not sure if you want to do it, or you're thinking you can be famous, you shouldn't do it because you want to be famous. You have to do it because you love it and you want to play for people. And if that's what you want to do, then do it, but you can't go into it with that mindset of "we'll be in a band and we'll be famous."

God help the troubadour who tries to be a star. The more that you try to find success, the more that you will fail.

There is no employment in the world so laborious as that of making to one's self a great name; life ends before one has scarcely made the first rough draught of his work.

I came to Los Angeles to be an actor, which is, at best, a gamble.

Want me to sell my soul, just so I can go gold. You can have the cars, clothes the jewerlies, the houses and hos. Cats do anything for a little bit of fame and a little bit of change. Industry snakes, they ain't friendly. Thought she loved me, she just tricked me.

Don't move to L.A to become an actress - you'll just be a waitress. Don't drive to Nashville to become a country music star - you'll just end up playing empty honky-tonks at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday.

I know that I'm a quirky guy, to say the least. I don't know how easy I am to cast for a network. It hasn't been because I haven't tried. But am I dying to be on a TV show? No.

Decide very early on: do you want to be an actor or do you want to be famous? Because they're very different routes.

I wanted to be a musician but I didn't have the talent for it, so I decided I wanted to be famous, so I became an actor.

I've wanted to be a professional actor for years and if you get any sort of success in that field then fame sort of comes along with it. But I don't know if I'm sort of media fodder like other people are. I'm essentially a family man.

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

If you are ambitious of climbing up to the difficult, and in a manner inaccessible, summit of the Temple of Fame, your surest way is to leave on one hand the narrow path of Poetry, and follow the narrower track of Knight-Errantry, which in a trice may raise you to an imperial throne.

You always read stories of people going out to California and making it as an actor with, like, two dollars, so I figured I'd try it.