"I'm not interested in money, I just want to be wonderful." --Marilyn Monroe

"A carrer is wonderful, but you can't curl up with it on a cold night." --Marilyn Monroe

"Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die, young, but then you'd never complete your life, would you? You’d never wholly know yourself..." --Marilyn Monroe

"It would be so nice to have a President who looks so young and good-looking." --Marilyn Monroe

"A dollar for your thoughts…" --Marilyn Monroe

"I've been on a calendar, but never on time." --Marilyn Monroe

"I’ve never dropped anyone I believed in." --Marilyn Monroe

"To them, it's money. --That’s what it’s all about." --Marilyn Monroe

"People respect you because they feel you’ve survived hard times and endured, and although you’ve become famous, you haven’t become phony." --Marilyn Monroe

"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." --Marilyn Monroe

"I was told that I was a mistake. My mother didn't want to have me. A divorced woman has enough problems in getting a man, I guess, but one with an illegitimate baby... I wish, I still wish, she had wanted me." --Marilyn Monroe

"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 must have unconscious results." --Marilyn Monroe

"It's better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone - so far." --Marilyn Monroe

"Becoming a movie star is like living on a merry-go-round." --Marilyn Monroe

"What am I afraid of?" --Marilyn Monroe

"Sexuality is only attractive when it is natural and spontaneous." --Marilyn Monroe

"I'm very definately a woman and I enjoy it." --Marilyn Monroe

"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." --Marilyn Monroe

"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." --Marilyn Monroe

"What do I wear in bed? Why, Chanel No. 5, of course." --Marilyn Monroe

"Blonde hair and breasts, that's how I got started." --Marilyn Monroe

"Dogs never bite me. Just humans." --Marilyn Monroe

"I was amazed how a picture made me look better than I was in real life." --Marilyn Monroe

"Sex is a part of nature. I go along with nature." --Marilyn Monroe

"Fame will go by and, so long, I've had you, Fame. If it goes by, I've always known it was fickle." --Marilyn Monroe

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

"You can read about yourself, somebody else's ideas about you, but what's important is how you feel about yourself." --Marilyn Monroe

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

"I'm a waif. I never called myself an orphan." --Marilyn Monroe

"As a young girl, the truth was that I was as unresponsive as a fossil... I used to lie awake at night and wonder why the boys came after me." --Marilyn Monroe

"Only the public can make me a star. It's the studios who try to make a system of it." --Marilyn Monroe

"If I play a stupid girl and ask a stupid question I've got to follow it through. What am I supposed to do -look intellegent?" --Marilyn Monroe

"Some people have been unkind. If I say I want to grow as an actress, they look at my figure. If I say I want to develop, to learn my craft, they laugh. Somehow they don't expect me to be serious about my work." --Marilyn Monroe

"If I'm a star, then the people made me a star." --Marilyn Monroe

"I never had friends, only conquests. I didn't have the time to find a real friend. I was always being looked at, had no chance to look." --Marilyn Monroe

"Sadie Thompson was a girl who knew how to look happy even when she was sad. And that's important -you know?" --Marilyn Monroe

"Acting is a real struggle. I'm one of the world's most self-conscious people. I really have to struggle." --Marilyn Monroe

"I have feelings too. I am still human. All I want is to be loved, for myself and for my talent." --Marilyn Monroe

"It might be kind of a relief to be finished." --Marilyn Monroe

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

"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." --Marilyn Monroe

"It stirs up envy, fame does. People you run into feel that, well, who does she think she is, Marilyn Monroe? They feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, you know, of any kind of nature---and it won't hurt your feelings..." --Marilyn Monroe

"A sex-symbol becomes a thing, I just hate being 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." --Marilyn Monroe

"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 they found this out, they would blame me for disillusioning them---and fooling them." --Marilyn Monroe

"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'm an actress." --Marilyn Monroe

"I really got the idea I must be a star, or something, from the newspapermen. . .who would interview me and they would be warm and friendly...they'd say, 'You know, you're the only star', and I'd say, 'star?' and they'd look at me as if I were nuts. I think they, in their own kind of way, made me realize I was famous." --Marilyn Monroe

"I'm nobody's slave and never have been. Nobody hypnotizes me to do this or that...Do you ever see on the screen, 'This picture was directed by an ignorant director with no taste?' No, the public always blames the star. Me. I had directors so stupid all they can do is repeat the lines of the script to me like they're reading a timetable. So I didn't get help from them. I had to find it elsewhere." --Marilyn Monroe

"When I was a kid, the world often seemed a pretty grim place. I loved to escape through games and make-believe. You can do that even better as an actress, but sometimes it seems you escape altogether and people never let you come back. You're trapped in your fame. Maybe I'll never get out of it now until it's over." --Marilyn Monroe

"A sruggle with shyness is in every actor more than anyone can imagine. There is a censor inside us that says to what degree we let go, like a child playing. I guess people think we just go out there, and you know, that's all we do---just do it. But it's a real struggle." --Marilyn

"I was becoming important enough to be attacked. Famous actresses took to denouncing me as a sure way of getting their names in the papers...In fact my popularity seemed almost entirely a masculine phenomenom. The women either pretended that I amused them or came right out, with no pretense, that I irritated them." --Marilyn Monroe

"Those big tough guys are so sick. They aren't even all that tough! They're afraid of kindness and gentleness and beauty. They always want to kill something to prove themselves!" --Marilyn Monroe

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

"When we were first married, he saw me as so beautiful and innocent among Hollywood wolves that I tried to be like that...But when the monster showed, Arthur couldn't believe it. I disappointed him when that happened...I put Arthur through a lot, I know. But he also put me through a lot." --Marilyn Monroe

"I don't think I've ever met a writer I'd like as my judge. They observe people, but often they don't feel them...But I think you've got to love people, all kinds of people, to be able to have an opinion about them that's worth anything...We can try to be better, and part of trying is not to condemn other people." --Marilyn Monroe

"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." --Marilyn Monroe

"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." --Marilyn Monroe

"Thirty-six is great when kids twelve to seventeen still whistle." --Marilyn Monroe

"Wives tend to go off like burglar alarms when they see their husbands talking to me."--Marilyn Monroe

"I've never been in a real Hollywood fight or fued. I have the most wonderful memory for forgetting things." --Marilyn Monroe

"If I had observed all the rules, I'd never have gotten anywhere."--Marilyn Monroe

"I want to grow old without face-lifts... I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face that I have made." --Marilyn Monroe