The line also suggests that success doesn’t create personality so much as amplify it. When someone is unknown, their irritations are private; when they become visible, those same traits are interpreted as attitude. Lebowitz implies that what changed wasn’t her, but the audience’s access to her.
This reframing helps explain why fame so often comes with moral storytelling. We want success to have psychological consequences because it makes the world feel orderly—yet the quote shrugs and says: sometimes people are simply themselves, louder and more scrutinized. [...]
