The modern world is not given to uncritical admiration. It expects its idols to have feet of clay, and can be reasonably sure that press and camera will report their exact dimensions.

A guy at the bar, well-dressed, came up behind Cassius [Muhammad Ali] and touched him lightly at about the level of the sixth rib and went back to the bar and told his girl, "That's Cassius Clay. I just touched him, no kidding."

I dream that my face appears on a postage stamp.

If you become a star, you don't change, everyone else does.

A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street anymore without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares.

I don't think humans are meant to be looked at when we're buying pants.

That so many people respond to me is fabulous. It is like having a kind of Alzheimer's disease, where everyone knows you and you don't know anyone.

I've signed dicks, asses, parole cards, a colostomy bag while it was still pumping. A couple of years ago, I signed a bloody Tampax. That's one you don't forget. I'm not asking for someone to top that!

Here is the autobiography. I would send you a lock of my hair but it's at the barbershop getting washed.

When I went to America I had two secretaries, one for autographs, one for locks of hair. Within six months the one had died of writer's cramp, the other was completely bald.