Sarcastic Quote by Charles James

"Never start believing your own press" lands like advice and indictment at once, and the reference point matters. Bonfire of the Vanities is basically a lab experiment in status: money, media, and ambition colliding until everyone mistakes the story being told about them for the truth of who they are. By invoking it, Charles James is less interested in literature than in the pathology the novel dramatizes: reputations aren’t mirrors, they’re weather systems.

The intent reads as a warning to anyone who operates in public-facing worlds (politics, business, culture) where attention is a currency that can be counterfeited. The line assumes a modern ecosystem in which "press" isn’t just reporting; it’s a feedback loop of hype, access, spin, and self-mythmaking. Believing it means outsourcing your self-knowledge to a chorus that has incentives to flatter you today and abandon you tomorrow. The subtext is that ego isn’t just unattractive; it’s strategically dangerous. Once you internalize the narrative, you start making decisions to protect the narrative, not reality.

There’s also a quieter critique of the press itself: it manufactures characters, not people. The seduction is mutual. Public figures crave the story; the story needs a protagonist. Wolfe’s satire showed how quickly that bargain curdles when the plot turns. James’s takeaway is brutal and practical: treat praise like a costume. Enjoy it, use it, never confuse it with skin.