Marilyn Monroe Quotes (173 Quotes)


    That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. But if I'm going to be a symbol of something, I'd rather have it sex than some other things we've got symbols of.


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

    I'm a failure as a woman. My men expect so much of me, because of the image they've made of me and that I've made of myself, as a sex symbol. Men expect so much, and I can't live up to it.

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


    Blond hair and breasts, that's how I got started. I couldn't act. All I had was blond hair and a body men liked. The reason I got ahead is that I was lucky and met the right men.

    Isn't there any other part of the matzo you can eat

    It's often just enough to be with someone. I don't need to touch them. Not even talk. A feeling passes between you both. You're not alone.

    The truth is I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't. When th

    I kept driving past the theatre with my name on the marquee. Was I excited. I wished they were using 'Norma Jeane' so that all the kids at the home and schools who never noticed me could see it.


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

    The only person I know who is in worse shape than I am (on Montgomery Clift).

    When it comes down to it, I let them think what they want. If they care enough to bother with what I do, then I'm already better than them anyways.

    The most unsatisfactory men are those who pride themselves on their virility and regard sex as if it were some form of athletics at which you can win cups. It is a 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 just by touching your head or smiling into your eyes or by just staring into space.

    People feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, of any kind of nature and it won't hurt your feelings like it's happening to your clothing.


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

    I've never been in a Hollywood fight or feud. I have the most wonderful memory for forgetting things.

    My arrival in school, with painted lips and darkened brows, started everybody buzzing. Why I was a siren, I hadn't the faintest idea. I didn't want to be kissed, and I didn't dream of being seduced by a duke or a movie star. The truth was that with all my

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


    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've often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people.


    Mv first contract with 20th Century-Fox was like my first vaccination. It didn't take.

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

    In Hollywood a girl's virtue is much less important than her hairdo. You're judged by how you look, not by what you are. Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty.

    The nicest thing for me is sleep, then at least I can dream.

    What I really want to say is that what the world needs is a feeling of kinship. Everybody stars, laborers, blacks, Jews, Arabs - we're all brothers

    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.'

    Acting isn't something you do. Instead of doing it, it occurs. If you're going to start with logic, you might as well give up. You can have conscious preparation, but you have unconscious results.

    I'm for the individual as opposed to the corporation. The way it is the individual is the underdog, and with all the things a corporation has going for them the individual comes out banged on her head. The artist is nothing. It's really tragic.

    I don't mind making jokes, but I don't want to look like one.

    I always felt I was nobody and the only way for me to be somebody was to be... well, somebody else.



    Sometimes I've been to a party where noone spoke to me for a whole evening. The men, frightened by their wives or sweetie. The ladies would gang up in a corner and discuss my dangerous character.

    Sugar Water polo Isn't that terribly dangerous Joe I'll say I had two ponies drowned under me.

    Everybody says I can't act. They said the same thing about Elizabeth Taylor. And they were wrong. She was great in A Place in the Sun. I'll never get the right part, anything I really want. My looks are against me. They're too specific.

    When you're a failure in Hollywood, that's like starving to death outside a banquet hall, with smells of filet mignon driving you crazy.

    Why haven't I the right to grow and expand like everybody else

    I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go. Things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right. You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.

    A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesnt believe, and leaves before she is left.

    Even though I was born there, I still can't think of one good thing to say about it. If I close my eyes, and picture LA, all I see is one big varicose vein.


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

    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.

    I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

    Fame will go by and, so long, I've had you, fame. If it goes by, I've always known it was fickle. So at least it's something I experience, but that's not where I live.


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