“Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity, too, because I love compliments. I love them even when they are not so. My child, I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat.”

Source: Lock In (2014), Chapter 22 (p. 296)

Herbert Howe, "Mary Pickford's Favorite Stars and Films". Photoplay, January 1924, p. 28-29. (Photoplay Publishing Company). https://archive.org/stream/pho26chic#page/n31/mode/2up

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. I am surprised, as well as delighted, when this happens, it is such a rare use he would make of me, as if he were acquainted with the tool.

Source: The Penelopiad

Vol. 1, letter 37.
Sir Charles Grandison (1753–1754)

Dick Cavett interview (1969)
Context: I don't really live on compliments. As a matter of fact, they have a way of distracting me. I know a whole lot of musicians, artists out there who hears the compliments and thinks "wow, I must have been really great" and so they get fat and satisfied and they get lost and forget about their actual talent and start living in another world.

My Twisted World (2014), Thoughts at 19, Compliments

Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)

During an interview in the latter years of his career http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YOti0icEbw