Marilyn Monroe Quotes

99 Sourced Quotes

I was never used to being happy, so that wasn't something I ever took for granted. I did sort of think, you know, marriage did that. You see, I was brought up differently from the average American child because the average child is brought up expecting to be happy - that's it, successful, happy, and on time.

Marilyn Monroe
Men love you more if they can be made a little uncertain about owning you.

Marilyn Monroe
Always admired men who had many women. It must be that to a child of a dissatisfied woman the idea of monogamy is hollow.

Marilyn Monroe
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.

Marilyn Monroe
I enjoy acting when you really hit it right. And I guess I've always had too much fantasy to be only a housewife.

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

Marilyn Monroe
Trying to build myself up with the fact that I have done things right that were even good and have had moments that were excellent but the bad is heavier to carry around and feel have no confidence.

Marilyn Monroe
Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I'd sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn't miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either.

Marilyn Monroe
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.

Marilyn Monroe
I always felt I was a nobody, and the only way for me to be somebody was to be — well, somebody else. Which is probably why I wanted to act.

Marilyn Monroe
For life: It is rather a determination not to be overwhelmed. For work: The truth can only be recalled, never invented.

Marilyn Monroe
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.

Marilyn Monroe
I don't want to play sex roles any more. I'm tired of being known as the girl with the shape.

Marilyn Monroe
If I'm going to be a symbol of something, I'd rather have it sex than some of the other things they've got symbols for today.

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

Marilyn Monroe
First, I'm trying to prove to myself that I'm a person. Then maybe I'll convince myself that I'm an actress.

Marilyn Monroe
An actor is not a machine... Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, 'One tear, right now,' that one tear would pop out. But once there came two tears because I thought, 'How dare he?'

Marilyn Monroe
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.

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. So at least it's something I experienced, but that's not where I live.

Marilyn Monroe
Important people are much more interesting when they are drunk and seem much more like human beings.

Marilyn Monroe
I don't know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot.

Marilyn Monroe
Most men judge your importance in their lives by how much you can hurt them.

Marilyn Monroe
The more I think of it, the more I realize there are no answers. Life is to be lived.

Marilyn Monroe
I never quite understood it — this sex symbol.... That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing.

Marilyn Monroe
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.

Marilyn Monroe
The truth is, I've never fooled anyone. I've let men sometimes fool themselves.

Marilyn Monroe
A strong man doesn't have to be dominant toward a woman. He doesn't match his strength against a woman weak with love for him. He matches it against the world.

Marilyn Monroe
I used to get the feeling, and sometimes I still get it, that sometimes I was fooling somebody. I don't know who or what — maybe myself.

Marilyn Monroe
In leaving Hollywood and coming to New York, I feel I can be more myself. After all, if I can't be myself, what's the good of being anything at all?

Marilyn Monroe
Sometimes I've been to a party where no one spoke to me for a whole evening. The men, frightened by their wives or sweeties, would give me a wide berth. And the ladies would gang up in a corner to discuss my dangerous character.

Marilyn Monroe