44 quotes
First, I'm trying to prove to myself that I'm a person. Then maybe I'll convince myself that I'm an actress.
I restore myself when I'm alone. A career is born in public — talent in privacy.
I don't know who invented the high heel, but all women owe him a lot. Excuse the pun, but it was the high heel that gave a big lift to my career.
My work is the only ground I've ever had to stand on. I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation — but I'm working on the foundation.
Marilyn Monroe: In Her Own Words (1983)
Elizabeth Taylor converted too. So we're both Jewish.
Marilyn Monroe Confidential (1980)
Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents.
Marilyn Monroe: In Her Own Words (1983)
If you're gonna be two-faced at least make one of them pretty.
I think to love bravely is the best.
It's a bad habit, I know, but I believe that you shouldn't do anything in life until you're ready. Half of life's heartaches come from decisions made in a hurry. One should make haste slowly.
Dogs never bite me. Just humans.
The studio people want me to do "Goodbye Charlie" for the movies, but I'm not going to do it. I don't like the idea of playing a man in a woman's body — you know? It just doesn't seem feminine.
People have curious attitudes about nudity just as they have about sex. Nudity and sex are the most commonplace things in the world. Yet people often act as if they were things that only existed on Mars.
My Story (2006)
They 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 clothes, not you.
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.
The truth is I've never fooled anyone. I've let men fool themselves. Men sometimes 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.
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. They expect bells to ring and whistles to whistle, but my anatomy is the same as any other woman's and I can't live up to it.
That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. But if I'm going to be a symbol of something, I'd rather it be sex than some of the things we've got symbols of... I hate to be a thing.
Say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to the president, and say goodbye to yourself because you're a nice guy. ... I'll see, I'll see.
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 lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.
On Being Blonde (2007)
A woman knows by intuition, or instinct, what is best for herself.
Misattributed