I am alone; I am always alone no matter what.
— Marilyn Monroe
I never wanted to be Marilyn - it just happened. Marilyn's like a veil I wear over Norma Jeane.
I have always had a talent for irritating women since I was fourteen.
The 'public' scares me, but people I trust.
An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.
There is a need for aloneness, which I don't think most people realise for an actor. It's almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you'll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you're acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They'd all like sort of a chunk of you.
I'm one of the world's most self-conscious people. I really have to struggle.
I enjoy acting when you really hit it right.
When I was five I think, that's when I started wanting to be an actress.
The working men, I'll go by and they'll whistle. At first they whistle because they think, 'Oh, it's a girl. She's got blond hair and she's not out of shape,' and then they say, 'Gosh, it's Marilyn Monroe!'
I often wake up in the night, and I like to have something to think about.
You know, most people really don't know me.
I think I have always had a little humor.
There isn't anybody that looks like me without clothes on.
Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.
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.
There was my name up in lights. I said, 'God, somebody's made a mistake.' But there it was, in lights. And I sat there and said, 'Remember, you're not a star.' Yet there it was up in lights.
It's not to much fun to know yourself too well or think you do - everyone needs a little conceit to carry them through & past the falls.
I want to be an artist, not... a celluloid aphrodisiac.
In fact, my popularity seems almost entirely a masculine phenomenon.
All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I'd worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: 'Don't hide these things from me. I'd rather you ask me these things straight out, and I'll answer all your questions.'
I myself would like to become more disciplined within my work.
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.
I've always felt toward the slightest scene, even if all I had to do in a scene was just to come in and say, 'Hi,' that the people ought to get their money's worth and that this is an obligation of mine, to give them the best you can get from me.
When I was 11, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world.
Of course, it does depend on the people, but sometimes I'm invited places to kind of brighten up a dinner table like a musician who'll play the piano after dinner, and I know you're not really invited for yourself. You're just an ornament.
Fame doesn't fulfill you. It warms you a bit, but that warmth is temporary.
Friends accept you the way you are.
What's the good of drawing in the next breath if all you do is let it out and draw in another?
I don't want everybody to see exactly where I live, what my sofa or my fireplace looks like.
Having a child, that's always been my biggest fear. I want a child and I fear a child.
I guess I have always been deeply terrified to really be someone's wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really.
My work is the only ground I've ever had to stand on. To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation, but I'm working on the foundation.
Husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.
I always have a full-length mirror next to the camera when I'm doing publicity stills. That way, I know how I look.
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.
We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves.
I think that sexuality is only attractive when it's natural and spontaneous.
I think that when you are famous every weakness is exaggerated.
Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you're a human being, you feel, you suffer. You're gay, you're sick, you're nervous or whatever.
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.
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.
I'll think I have a few wonderful friends and all of a sudden, ooh, here it comes. They do a lot of things. They talk about you to the press, to their friends, tell stories, and you know, it's disappointing.
I was brought up differently than the average American child because the average child is brought up expecting to be happy.
With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else's ideas about you, but what's important is how you feel about yourself - for survival and living day to day with what comes up.
I don't digest things with my mind.
I just got to feel that whoever I marry has some real regard for me.
I've always wanted a baby.
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 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.
