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 lipstick and mascara and precocious curves, I was as unresponsive as a fossil. But I seemed to affect people quite otherwise.
MM to Ben Hechi on the student Norma Jeane



I used to think as I looked out on the Hollywood night- there must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest.
MM on her early aspirations

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.
MM on her marriage to Jim Dougherty

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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 bellv.
MM on her struggling years

I was never used to being happy, so that wasn't something I ever took for granted. You see, I was brought up differently from the average American child because the average child is brought up expecting to be happy.

No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they're pretty, even if they aren't.

I think if other girls know how bad I was when I started thev'll be encouraged. I finally made up my mind I wanted to be an actress ~and I was not going to let my lack of confidence ruin my chances.

There were dozens of us on the set, bit players, with a gesture to make and a line or two to recite. A few were young and had nice bosoms; but I knew they were different from me. They didn't have my illusions. My illusions didn't have anything to do with being a fine actress. I knew how third- rate I was. I could actually feel my lack of talent, as if it were cheap clothes I was wearing inside. But, my God, how I wanted to learn, to change, to improve'. I didn't want anything else. Not men, not money, not love, but the ability to act. I strove to look like Betty Grable, but I thought Alice Faye had more class to her looks.

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



I will do whatever you tell me.
MM to Natasha Lytess, upon their first meeting, 1948

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.
MM on the release of Ladies of the Chorus, 1948

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 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.

I hear you're looking for a sexy blonde to play with the Marx Brothers. Would you like to see me.~ I'm blonde and I'm sexy.
MM to Lester Cowan on the casting of Love Happy, 1949

I think cheesecake helps call attention to you. Then you can follow through and prove yourself.
MM to Bob Thomas, 1951

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.
MM to Hedda Hopper, 1952

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Wouldn't it be nice to be like men, just getting notches in your belt, having affairs with the most atttractive men . . . and not getting emotionally involved?
MM to Shelley Winters

You would think all other women kept their bodies in vaults.
MM, after causing a scandal for wearing a low-cut dress, 1952

I always thought that movie stars were exciting and talented people, full of special personality. Meeting one of them at a party I discover usually that he (or she) is colorless and even frightened. I've often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people.

It isn't necessary to use your voice in any special way (to sound sexy). If you think something sexy the voice just naturally goes along. I've given pure sex appeal very little thought. If I had to think about it, I'm sure it worild frighten me.

What do I wear in bed? Why, Chanel No.5, of course.
MM to Sidney Skolsky, 1952

'It's like salt on a steak. All you need is a little bit of it.'
MM on jealousy, 1952

If I am a star, the people made me a star. No studio, no person, but the people did.

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

I've fallen in love with Brooklyn. I'm going to buy a little house in Brooklyn and live there. I'll go to the coast only when I have to make a picture.
MM, July 1955

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

I want to continue my growth in every way.

'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.

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.
MM to Truman Capote on Los Angeles, 1955

Everybody says I can't act. T'hey said the same thing about Elizabeth Taylor. And they were wrong. She was great in A Place in the Sun.



I've always known Errol [Flynn] zigzagged. I have a masseur, he's practically my sister, and he was Tyrone Power's masseur, and he told me all about the thing Errol and Ty Power had going.
MM to Truman Capote

Dogs never bite me. Just humans.

They've said I want to direct pictures. I couldn't direct traffic.
MM to Earl Wilson, 1955

I don't mind this being a man's world-as long as I can be a woman in it.

I wanna guy I can look up to . . . I just gotta feel that whoever I marry has some real regard for me, aside from all that loving stuff.
MM in Bus Slop, 1956

I like actors very much, but to marry one would be like marrying your brother. You look too much alike in the mirror.

I don't consider myself an intellectual. And this is not one of my aims. But I admire intellectual people.

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. A career is wonderful, but you can't curl up with it on a cold night.

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

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I'm not going back into that film until Wilder reshoots my opening. When Marilyn Monroe comes into a room, nobody's going to be looking at Tony Curtis playing Joan Crawford. They're going to be looking at Marilyn Monroe."
MM, after walking off the set of Some Like It Hot, 1958

Some of those bastards in Hollywood wanted me to drop Arthur. Said it would ruin my career. They're born cowards and want you to be like them.

One reason I want to see Kennedy win is that Nixon's associated with that whole scene.
MM to W. J. Weatherby, circa 1960



What am I afraid of? Do I think I can't act? I know I can act, but I am afraid. I am afraid and I should not be and I must not be.
A notation made in MM's notebook while making Let's Make Love, 1960

No, I'm Mitzi Gaynor.
MM to an extra on the Set of The Misfits who asked her,
'Are you Marilyn Monroe?'

Remember now, cheers, no tears....
MM to the cast at the completion of The Misfits shooting, 1960

As of today, I have absolutely no regrets. I think I am a mature person now' 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'm thinking for myself and sitting in on business transactions.
MM, 1961

The reality is very different - it's better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone-so far.



Arthur [Miller] and I are finished. Arthur saw the demon in me... a lot of people like to think of me as innocent, so that's the way I behave to them ... if they saw the demon in me they would hate me... I'm more than one person, and I act differently each time...most of the time I'm not the person I'd like to be- certainly not a dumb blonde like they say I am; a sex freak with big boobs.
MM to Jack Cardiff

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

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.

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

'It seems to me it's time they stopped knocking their assets around.
MM, upon being fired from Fox, 1962

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

I am trying to prove to myself that I am a person. Then maybe I'll convince myself that I am an actress.

"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.

I never quite understood it - this sex symbol-I always thought svmbols were those things you clash together! That's the trouble, a sex sembol is a thing. But if I'm going to be the symbol of something, I'd rather have it sex than some other things they've got symbols of!'



Please believe me, it was not my doing ... I so looked forward to working with you.
MM to the cast and crew of Something's Got to Give, 1962

Can you imagine me as first lady?
MM to Bob Slatzer, 1962

How can I learn something about the most famous philosophers in a few hours? I'm going to a party tonight and I want to be able to hold my own.
MM to Dr. G. W. Campbell, circa 1962

I have never been very good at being a member of any group -more than a group of two, that is.
MM, 1962

I never intentionally' mean to hurt anyone, but you can't be too nice to people you work with, else they will trample you to death.
MM to James Bacon

I used to say to myself, 'What the devil have you got to be proud about, Marilyn Monroe?' And I'd answer, 'Everything, everything,' and I'd walk slowly and turn my head slowly as if I were a queen.

I don't mind being burdened with being glamorous and sexual. But what goes with it can be a burden. We are all born sexual creatures, thank God, but it's a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift.