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Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; riches take wings; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.

Since fame is an illusion and death is in our future all we have is the next moment before we are swallowed into oblivion.

The majority see the obstacles; the few see the objectives; history records the successes of the latter, while oblivion is the reward of the former.

Personally, I would not care for immortality in the least. There is nothing better than oblivion, since in oblivion there is no wish unfulfilled. We had it before we were born yet did not complain. Shall we whine because we know it will return? It is Elysium enough for me, at any rate.

I gratefully look forward to oblivion, but I must be sure of it.

I think about fanaticism - oblivion awaits, especially for minor writers, so you have to be a fanatic; you have to be a crank to keep going, but on the other hand, what else would you do with the rest of your life? You gotta do something.

For sure I once thought of myself as the poet who would save the ordinary from oblivion.

I did what I could to inflate the rumor I was on my way to stardom. What I was on my way to, by any mathematical standards known to man, was oblivion, by way of obscurity.

Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.

Some people can handle fame, some can't.