Marilyn Monroe Quotes

I have always had a talent for irritating women since I was fourteen.

Designers want me to dress like Spring, in billowing things. I don’t feel like Spring. I feel like a warm red Autumn.

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

I know I will never be happy, but I know I can be gay!

I am not a victim of emotional conflicts. I am human.

A smart girl leaves before she is left.

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

The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.

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

I often wake up in the night, and I like to have something to think about.

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.

I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle.

My dinners at home are startlingly simple. Every night, I stop at the market near my hotel and pick up a steak, lamb chops or some liver, which I broil in the electric oven in my room. I usually eat four or five raw carrots with my meat, and that is all. I must be part rabbit; I never get bored with raw carrots.

Men are so willing to respect anything that bores them.

Of course, it does depend on the people, but sometimes I’m invited places to kind of brighten up a dinner table like a musician who’ll play the piano after dinner, and I know you’re not really invited for yourself. You’re just an ornament.

Depending upon my activities, I sleep between five and ten hours every night. I sleep in an extra-wide single bed, and I use only one heavy down comforter over me, summer or winter. I have never been able to wear pajamas or creepy nightgowns; they disturb my sleep.

Arthur Miller wouldn’t have married me if I had been nothing but a dumb blonde.

Having a child, that’s always been my biggest fear. I want a child and I fear a child.

I think one of the basic reasons men make good friends is that they can make up their minds quickly.

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

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.

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

I defy gravity.

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

If you spend your life competing with business men, what do you have? A bank account and ulcers!

To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation. But I’m working on the foundation.

What I really want to say: That what the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers.

A woman can’t be alone. She needs a man. A man and a woman support and strengthen each other. She just can’t do it by herself.

Sometimes I’ve been to a party where no one spoke to me for a whole evening. The men, frightened by their wives or sweeties, would give me a wide berth. And the ladies would gang up in a corner to discuss my dangerous character.

Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I’d sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn’t miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either.

When it comes to gossip, I have to readily admit men are as guilty as women.

Millions of people live their entire lives without finding themselves. But it is something I must do.

At twelve I looked like a girl of seventeen. My body was developed and shapely. I still wore the blue dress and the blouse the orphanage provided. They made me look like an overgrown lummox.

Why is it you always meet people when you look your worst?

Next to my husband, and along with Marlon Brando, I think that Yves Montand is the most attractive man I’ve ever met.

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.

When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

Dreaming about being an actress, is more exciting then being one.

I’m one of the world’s most self-conscious people. I really have to struggle.

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 was honoured when they asked me to appear at the president’s birthday rally in Madison Square Garden. There was like a hush over the whole place when I came on to sing ‚Happy Birthday,‘ like if I had been wearing a slip, I would have thought it was showing or something. I thought, ‚Oh, my gosh, what if no sound comes out!‘

I wish I knew why I am so anguished.

Consider the fellow. He never spends his time telling you about his previous night’s date. You get the idea he has eyes only for you and wouldn’t think of looking at another woman.

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

Marriage destroyed my relationship with two wonderful men.

I want the world to see my body.

I have noticed… that men usually leave married women alone and are inclined to treat all wives with respect. This is no great credit to married women.

When I was 11, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world.

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.

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

When I was five I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress.

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument. Isaac Stern takes good care of his violin. What if everybody jumped on his violin?

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: ‚Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.‘

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.

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

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

I think that when you are famous every weakness is exaggerated.

There are many times when a woman will ask another girl friend how she likes her new hat. She will reply, ‚Fine,‘ but slap her hand to her forehead the minute the girl leaves to yipe, ‚What a horror!‘