Celebrity culture it's everywhere isn't it? It's reality TV Big Brother. I didn't become a footballer to be famous I became a footballer to be successful. I didn't want to be famous. Now people want to be famous. Why? Why would you want people following you about all day?

I'm not unknown yet I'm not super famous where I can't go anywhere.

I'm learning as I go. I don't know everything. I never had anybody to look at nobody ever taught me and where I'm from I didn't have any famous role models.

Of course there have been times I regretted being the kid in 'E.T.' My world went completely crazy. I was that stupid kind of famous where you can't go anywhere.

When I first became famous I didn't know if I could go where I wanted to because I didn't know how people were going to act. Some folks would scream and holler and I didn't know what to do with that.

I was in a karaoke video in 1991 for a song called 'Sukiyaki ' which is a very famous Japanese song and I've actually heard from people that they've been in bars in Asia where they've seen me come up in the 'Sukiyaki' video that they play behind you. I'm in that. I'm in a karaoke video.

We played in Texas about a year ago at Emo's the famous country and western club in Austin. And I figured well if I'm finally gonna die onstage that's where it's going to be!

Whereas you have someone like Houdini who works really really hard to get really really famous and then has actual intellectual ideas that he puts into the culture that stay there.

And I don't want to live anywhere where I am famous. It makes me very very uncomfortable because it conveys an advantage over people and I don't like that.

It's sour grapes I admit I want to be more famous so people are examining my work couplet by couplet you know what I mean? That's the level where I want to go.

I try to become more humble and more myself with every year. There was a while when I got famous where I was so confused and my head was spinning.

I never feel so utterly fraudulent as when I review a movie whose charms impress all in the world and I simply do not get it. The other variant is that I love something the world disdains. This has had severe career consequences: I am still famous - or notorious - in certain quarters where I am recalled as the man who liked 'Hudson Hawk.'

I studied Japanese language and culture in college and graduate school and afterward went to work in Tokyo where I met a young man whose father was a famous businessman and whose mother was a geisha.

I don't want to be famous famous. I'm happy on the second tier where I have autonomy on a professional level but I can still go out to the movies without being recognized.

I'm world famous everywhere I go there are people who love me because of I've been able to bring them some joy from the movies I've made.

Quite often I can be in a bookshop standing beneath a great big picture of myself and paying for a book with a credit card clearly marked John Grisham yet no one recognises me. I often say I'm a famous author in a country where no one reads.

It was deeply important for me to understand where Mandela came from. Because we know where he was going and that's a famous story but who was he? Where did he come from? What was his upbringing?

A lot of times on tour it's about 'OK where am I today? Wow I'm in Costa Rica. What is their famous dish?' And it's about trying the food and really experiencing it.

I think in the end when you're famous people like to narrow you down to a few personality traits. I think I've just become this ambitious say-whatever's-on-her-mind intimidating person. And that's part of my personality but it's certainly not anywhere near the whole thing.

A library to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life.

I kept saying that I'd never live in L.A. and I didn't think I would. But that's where the work is and I ended up making a lot of friends there and my old friends moved out to Los Angeles too. And also I think when you're famous its hard to live in a small town.

The whole 'American Idol' way of looking at things is the antithesis of what I grew up with. There are a whole lot of kids wanting to be famous now whereas if I'd even mentioned that word to one of my teachers I would have got into a whole load of trouble.

I was famous overnight. I went from nowhere to being really big.

Exposure makes you famous not just good work. Famous is being plastered everywhere.