Marilyn Monroe Quotes (173 Quotes)

I won't be satisfied until people want to hear me sing without looking at me.

Men are so willing to respect anything that bores them.

With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else's ideas about you, but what's important is how you feel about yourself--for survival and living day to day with what comes up.

It's not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on.

Joe You don't want me, Sugar. I'm a liar and a phony. A saxophone player. One of those no-goodniks you keep running away from. Sugar I know, every time. Joe Sugar, do yourself a favor. Go back to where the millionaires are, the sweet end of the lollipop, not the cole slaw in the face, the old socks and the squeezed-out tube of toothpaste. Sugar That's right. Pour it on. Talk me out of it. (She grabs him to kiss him.)

As of today, I have absolutely no regrets. I think I am a mature person who can take things in stride. I'm grateful for people in my past. They helped me get to where I am, wherever that is. But now, I am thinking for myself and sitting in on all the business transactions.

Every morning I walk across my apartment rolling an empty soda bottle between my ankles, in order to preserve my balance.

I don't care about money, I just want to be wonderful.

Johnny Hyde was wonderful, but he was not my Svengali. Milton Greene was not my Svengali I' m nobody's slave and never have been ... Now they write that Lee Strasberg is my Svengali . . . and Arthur Miller isn't my Svengali.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you're a human being, you feel, you suffer.

There's only one sort of natural blonde on earth - albinos.

A photographer once told me that my two best points are between my waist and my neck.

You sit alone. It's night outside. Automobiles roll down Sunset Boulevard like an endless string of beetles. Their rubber tires make a purring high-class noise. You're hungry, and you say, 'It's not good for my waistline to eat.' There's nothing finer than a washboard belly.

The thing I want more than anything else? I want to have children. I used to feel for every child I had, I would adopt another.

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

I think cheesecake helps call attention to you. Then you can follow through and prove yourself.

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.

People ask me if I am going on making cheesecake pictures now that I'm a star. My answer is that as long as there is a boy in Korea who wants a pinup of me, I'll go on posing for them.

An actress is not a machine, but they treat you like a machine. A money machine.

Fame is fickle and I know it. It has its compensations, but it also has its drawbacks and I've experienced them both.

It's nice to be included in people's fantasies, but you also like to be accepted for your own sake.

What do I wear in bed? Why, Chanel No. 5, of course.

A sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing.

I don't want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.

I've never dropped anyone I believed in.

A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, leaves before she is left and forgets before she is forgotten.

Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.

Dogs never bite me. Just humans.

Goethe said, 'Talent is developed in privacy, ' you knowAnd it's really true. There is a need for aloneness which I don't think most people realize 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.

People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person. They didn't see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.

I'm trying to find myself as a person, sometimes that's not easy to do. Millions of people live their entire lives without finding themselves. But it is something I must do. The best way for me to find myself as a person is to prove to myself that I am an actress.

I don't know if high society is different in other cities, but in Hollywood important people can't stand to be invited someplace that isn't full of other important people. They don't mind a few unfamous people being present because they make good listeners. But 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.

My travels have always been of the same kind. No matter where I've gone or why I've gone there it ends up that I never see anything. Becoming a movie star is living on a merry-go-round. When you travel you take the merry-go-round with you. You don't see natives or new scenery. You see chiefly the same press agents, the same sort of interviewers, and the same picture layouts of yourself.

Everybody is always tugging at you. They'd all like a sort of chunk out of you. I don' think they realize it, but it's like 'grrr do this, grr do that...' But you do want to stay intact--intact and on two feet.

My marriage brought me neither happiness nor pain. My husband and I hardly spoke to each other. This wasn't because we were angry. We had nothing to say.

Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you.

I have too many fantasies to be a housewife. I guess I am a fantasy.

If you can make a girl laugh - you can make her do anything.

Imperfection is beauty. Madness is genius and it is better to be absolutely ridiculous then absolutly boring.

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

You know who I always depend on Not strangers, not friends. The telephone That's my best friend. I seldom write letters, but I love calling friends, especially late at night, when I can't sleep.

It takes a smart brunette to play a dumb blonde.

Ever notice that what the hell is always the right decision.

My great ambition is to have people comment on my fine dramatic performances.

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

Doctor, I want you to help me get rid of Murray. I can't flat out fire her. Next thing would be a book 'Secrets of Marilyn Monroe by Her Housekeeper.' She'd make a fortune spilling what she knows and she knows too damn much.

What good is it being Marilyn Monroe Why can't I just be an ordinary woman A woman who can have a family ... I'd settle for just one baby. My own baby.

I used to get the feeling, and sometimes I still get it, that I was fooling somebody-I don't know who or what-maybe myself. I have feelings some days when there are scenes with a lot of responsiblity, and I'll wish, gee, if only I would have been a cleaning woman.

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

It's woman's spirit and mood a man has to stimulate in order to make sex interesting. The real lover is the man who can thrill you by touching your head or smiling into your eyes or just staring into space.