How strange when an illusion dies. It's as though you've lost a child. - Randy L. Schmidt

When a studio puts you under contract, its publicity department starts turning out news copy about you that you read with astonishment. You think, can this be me they’re talking about? They don’t really manufacture untruths, but they play up whatever makes interesting reading, and then a columnist adds his own little embellishments and another adds to that until there’s a whole body of so called ‘facts’ floating around — almost like another you — that simply isn’t real. It isn’t a lie, but it isn’t real, either.

Lions and tigers, and bears, oh my! - Dorothy in Wizard of Oz (1939)

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of someone else