What good is it being Marilyn Monroe? Why can’t I just be an ordinary woman?

There are a lot of people who don’t know me and what I am all about.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.

Well, Howard Stern has been doing his impression of me for years. It doesn’t really bother me.

Pick the day. Enjoy it – to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come… The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present – and I don’t want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.

I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time.

What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What’s the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history… this is what makes you strong. It’s not looking out that’s going to do that – it’s looking in.

I’m on record that it didn’t really traumatize me to do away with some people.

People can try to reinvent themselves. I don’t think you can really change who you are, though, because who you are is pretty much where you came from and what you’ve done up to now.

Where would I be without baseball? Who am I without baseball?

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I’m talking about myself very directly.

Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

I was sure I’d set the world on fire, and it was hard for a young feller like me to realize the truth – that I hadn’t set the world on fire, and I was totally unprepared to handle the consequences if ‚The Big Trail‘ had been a success and launched me as a star.

It seems like we wake up and it’s a race until you get to bed. It gets to you after a while and you think, ‚What the hell am I doing?‘

Know that any and all thoughts that you have regarding your own skills, interests, and inclinations are valid. To reinforce the validity of your thoughts, keep them private. Tell yourself that they’re between you and God.

I’m an instant star. Just add water and stir.

The fact that my 15 minutes of fame has extended a little longer than 15 minutes is somewhat surprising to me and completely baffling to my wife.

I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

The Internet made fame wack and anonymity cool.

Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind.

We don’t have to let extremists define us.

I think being an atheist is something you are, not something you do.

It would be an egregious mistake to ever refer to me in the same breath as most of the people I write about.

I don’t think I ever thought of myself as Superman. But there were people who thought of me that way, and maybe I believed them a little.

When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

I didn’t come to Hollywood. Hollywood came to me. A lot of people wish they could say the things I say. Everyone out here is so phony, it’s sickening.

If you were to ask me to choose between democratic values and wealth, power, prosperity and fame, I will very easily and without any doubt choose democratic values.

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god; but who knows my god?

In less than a hundred years, we have found a new way to think of ourselves. From sitting at the center of the universe, we now find ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just one of millions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.

These critics with the illusions they’ve created about artists – it’s like idol worship. They only like people when they’re on their way up… I cannot be on the way up again.

I saw a picture of myself when I came out of the hospital. I didn’t recognize myself.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

What a liberation to realize that the ‚voice in my head‘ is not who I am. ‚Who am I, then?‘ The one who sees that.

At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.

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.

My upbringing in Canada made me the person I am. I will always be proud to be a Canadian.

I’m not a star. I don’t feel I’m so great. So how can I make you feel great just because you’ve got my signature on a piece of paper?

Acting is a nice childish profession – pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‚If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?‘ And whenever the answer has been ‚No‘ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

I think and that is all that I am.

It confuses me and disappoints me when somebody says, ‚What does he do? What does he do?‘ My records are some of the biggest anthems ever. What do you think, they magically just appear? Obama walked out to my record.

Overnight stardom can be harmful to your mental health. Yeah. It has ruined a lot of people.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

To solve any problem, here are three questions to ask yourself: First, what could I do? Second, what could I read? And third, who could I ask?

Woman’s at best a contradiction still.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

I like to think of Everest as a great mountaineering challenge, and when you’ve got people just streaming up the mountain – well, many of them are just climbing it to get their name in the paper, really.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

I wear the national dress because it is the most natural and the most becoming for an Indian.