"Fame requires every kind of excess.
I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the sombre renown of a wanning
statesman or chinless king. I mean a long journey across grey space. I
mean danger, the edge of every void, the circumstances of one man
imparting an erotic terror to the dreams of a republic. Understand the man
who must inhabit these extreme regions, monstrous and vuval, damp with
memories of violation. Even if half-mad he is absorbed into the public's
total madness, even if fully rational, a burocrat in hell, a secret genius
of survival, he is sure to be destroyed by the public's contempt for
survivors. Fame, this special kind, feeds itself on outrage, on what
counsellers of lesser man would consider bad publicity - histeria in a
limousine, knife fights in the audience, bizarre litigation, treachery,
pandemonium and drugs. Perhaps the only natural law attached to true fame
is that the famous man is compelled, eventually, to commit suicide..."


Wrote by Don DeLillo in Great Jones Street (1973)