"It isn't false modesty when I say this, but although I am supposed to be a famous person it doesn't mean anything to me. I just sit at home and work"
About this Quote
Fame is treated here like a clerical error: something the outside world insists on filing under your name, while your real life stays stubbornly unglamorous. Ligeti’s line works because it refuses the two standard scripts available to “famous people”: either basking in recognition or performing coy humility. He anticipates the accusation of “false modesty” and swats it away, not with moral purity, but with a flat, almost bored practicality. The posture is less saintly than procedural: the job is the job; the noise around it is incidental.
The subtext is a quiet indictment of celebrity culture’s demand that public attention be metabolized into identity. “Supposed to be a famous person” is the key phrasing, implying fame is a role assigned by others, a costume you’re told you’re wearing whether or not it fits. That distance creates irony: society treats prominence as proof of significance, yet he insists significance lives elsewhere - in the private, repetitive labor of making. “I just sit at home and work” lands like a punchline precisely because it’s anti-mythic. No salons, no genius theatrics, no tortured parade of inspiration; just routine.
Context matters: for a serious writer (and especially for a Central/Eastern European artist shaped by institutions, censors, and gatekeepers), reputation can feel both precarious and irrelevant. The line suggests a survival strategy: keep your center of gravity in the work, because fame is weather. What lasts is the discipline, and the stubborn refusal to confuse attention with achievement.
The subtext is a quiet indictment of celebrity culture’s demand that public attention be metabolized into identity. “Supposed to be a famous person” is the key phrasing, implying fame is a role assigned by others, a costume you’re told you’re wearing whether or not it fits. That distance creates irony: society treats prominence as proof of significance, yet he insists significance lives elsewhere - in the private, repetitive labor of making. “I just sit at home and work” lands like a punchline precisely because it’s anti-mythic. No salons, no genius theatrics, no tortured parade of inspiration; just routine.
Context matters: for a serious writer (and especially for a Central/Eastern European artist shaped by institutions, censors, and gatekeepers), reputation can feel both precarious and irrelevant. The line suggests a survival strategy: keep your center of gravity in the work, because fame is weather. What lasts is the discipline, and the stubborn refusal to confuse attention with achievement.
Quote Details
| Topic | Humility |
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