Marilyn Monroe Quotes

A woman knows by intuition, or instinct, what is best for herself.

Marriage destroyed my relationship with two wonderful men.

We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves.

One of the best things that ever happened to me is that I'm a woman. That is the way all females should feel.

If I'm a star, then the people made me a star.

Only the public can make a star. It's the studios who try to make a system out of it.

A woman can bring a new love to each man she loves, providing there are not too many.

If I'd observed all the rules, I'd never have got anywhere.

I learned to walk as a baby, and I haven't had a lesson since.

I am not interested in money. I just want to be wonderful.

I'm looking forward to becoming a marvelous - excuse the word marvelous - character actress. like Marie Dressler, like Will Rogers.

I don't look at myself as a commodity, but I'm sure a lot of people have.

Husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.

There is a need for aloneness, which I don't think most people realise for an actor. It's almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you'll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you're acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They'd all like sort of a chunk of you.

You know, most people really don't know me.

I don't want everybody to see exactly where I live, what my sofa or my fireplace looks like.

The public doesn't mind people living together without being married, providing they don't overdo it.

When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.

Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.

The 'public' scares me, but people I trust.

I want to be an artist, not... a celluloid aphrodisiac.

I always have a full-length mirror next to the camera when I'm doing publicity stills. That way, I know how I look.

I like actors very much, but to marry one would be like marrying your brother. You look too much alike in the mirror.

I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it.

Fame may go by and - so long, I've had you.

There was my name up in lights. I said, 'God, somebody's made a mistake.' But there it was, in lights. And I sat there and said, 'Remember, you're not a star.' Yet there it was up in lights.

In Hollywood a girl's virtue is much less important than her hairdo.

Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is tired, hurt and bewildered.

Beauty and femininity are ageless and can't be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers won't like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour; it's based on femininity.

A man is more frank and sincere with his emotions than a woman. We girls, I'm afraid, have a tendency to hide our feelings.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you'd never complete your life, would you? You'd never wholly know you.

Someone said to me, 'If fifty percent of the experts in Hollywood said you had no talent and should give up, what would you do?' My answer was then and still is, 'If a hundred percent told me that, all one hundred percent would be wrong.'

I have feelings too. I am still human. All I want is to be loved, for myself and for my talent.

The working men, I'll go by and they'll whistle. At first they whistle because they think, 'Oh, it's a girl. She's got blond hair and she's not out of shape,' and then they say, 'Gosh, it's Marilyn Monroe!'

I'm very definitely a woman and I enjoy it.

For a long time I was scared I'd find out I was like my mother.

The time I sort of began to think I was famous, I was driving somebody to the airport, and as I came back there was this movie house, and I saw my name in lights. I pulled the car up at a distance down the street; it was too much to take up close, you know, all of a sudden. And I said, 'God, somebody's made a mistake.' But there it was, in lights.

Friends accept you the way you are.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

I am invariably late for appointments - sometimes as much as two hours. I've tried to change my ways but the things that make me late are too strong, and too pleasing.

I guess I have always been deeply terrified to really be someone's wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really.

Sometimes, wearing a scarf and a polo coat and no makeup and with a certain attitude of walking, I go shopping or just look at people living. But then, you know, there will be a few teenagers who are kind of sharp, and they'll say, 'Hey, just a minute. You know who I think that is?' And they'll start tailing me. And I don't mind.

I've been on a calendar, but I've never been on time.

I've found men are less likely to let petty things annoy them.

If a star or studio chief or any other great movie personages find themselves sitting among a lot of nobodies, they get frightened - as if somebody was trying to demote them.

No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they're pretty, even if they aren't.

The trouble with censors is that they worry if a girl has cleavage. They ought to worry if she hasn't any.

I won't be satisfied until people want to hear me sing without looking at me. Of course, that doesn't mean I want them to stop looking.

I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.