Quotes About Publicity

I find myself asking questions that as a filmmaker I never thought I would ask. Like I get a call from a magazine for a feature and my first question is, 'Cover or not?' Interview invite from a leading channel? I have stopped asking the topic. I'm just like 'Primetime or not?' If I am invited and put in the second row, I can be distraught for days!

The media doesn't really help you. Today, they are talking about me. Tomorrow, they will talk about someone else. There is always something or somebody who is topical.

I was not so interested in night-after-night coverage of Michael Jackson's death or Britney Spears' latest breakdown - topics that were 'breaking news' at the time.

It's a very strange situation to be in when you have pictures of you topless everywhere and people thrusting them in your face all time.

I don't want to be known as the guy who always takes his shirt off... I've done a lot of photo shoots lately for the press coming up with 'Immortals' and 'Breaking Dawn,' and every photographer wants to get the topless shot. We've really had to be choosy and not do that for every magazine. I've actually been trying to keep my clothes on more.

I just know that on TV or off TV, I've been very much targeted and torn apart.

And when things are not going well in Toronto, you're going to hear about it. And you're going to say things are not good at all, where it's really not that bad.

Have you ever heard the expression 'one hot mess?' I think the term was custom-made for the mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford.

One of the advantages of playing in a smaller market is that I can go back to Toronto, or all across the States and never be recognized. I get to go out to dinner, walk my dog, or go to the mall and nobody knows who I am.

My tortured life - with its extremes and conflicts - might have been difficult for me to deal with, but the press couldn't get enough of it. I was in the papers every day, 'the enfant terrible of the culinary world.'

We should remember the campaign advertising will be only a smaller portion of the President's total exposure.

Recently my publicist asked me for a college photo, and I realize how chubby I looked. I know this sounds totally shallow, but my advice is don't fall prey to the freshmen fifteen!

When I came out, I was 68, and I was totally prepared for my career to recede when I spoke to the press for the first time. What happened after that blew me away. I started getting more offers. My career blossomed.

I think it's totally up to the individual if they'd like a private life or if they'd like to be in the public eye - it's a choice you can make.

I can be a show-off at home. But publicly, I have always been a private person. It's not totally my bag to court the press.

I find that when you see somebody in the tabloids all the time, you have no desire to see them in movies.

I was never famous as a kid. That's the biggest difference between me and any other kid actor is that I wasn't famous as a kid.

Y'all reporters like my quotes, don't you. Yeah, my quotes are Shaqalicious.

There are a lot of good things about being famous but there are a few not so good things too.

I think I've spent more time in front of a camera than off camera. That's just the way it is.

Every time a story about me appears in a newspaper, I am injured professionally.

I've stayed away from Twitter for a long time because I sort of didn't trust myself with such an intimate but very public way of relating to the world, but I feel like I've studied it enough.

Of course, every time someone does a story on plastic surgery, my name will be dragged up. I've made it safe for other people to have plastic surgery. It's no longer a bad word.

Sometimes you move publicly, sometimes privately. Sometimes quietly, sometimes at the top of your voice. And sometimes an active policy is best advanced by doing nothing until the right timeor never.