Marilyn Monroe

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.

Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.

Hollywood with their eyes – an overcrowded brothel, a merry-go-round with beds for horses.

You can't sleep your way into being a star, though. It takes much, much more. But it helps. A lot of actresses get their first chance that way. Most of the men are such horrors, they deserve all they can get out of them!

I've slept with producers. I'd be a liar if I said I didn't.

Don't make me a joke, please. I don't mind making jokes, but I don't want to be one.

Husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.

I was brought up differently from the average American child. Because the average child is brought up expecting to be happy. She had to teach herself how to be happy.

He [Joe DiMaggio] wants to cut me off completely from my world.

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.

I do have feelings some days when there are scenes with a lot of responsibility toward the meaning, and I'll wish, 'Gee, if only I had been a cleaning woman.'

When you're famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way. It stirs up envy, fame does. People you run into feel that, well, who is she 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. Like it's happening to your clothing.

I don't like the idea of playing a man in a woman's body — you know? It just doesn't seem feminine.

The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.

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.

Please don't make me a joke… I don't mind making jokes, but I don't want to look like one. I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity.

I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

This life is what you make it. No matter what, you're going to mess up sometimes, it's a universal truth. But the good part is you get to decide how you're going to mess it up.

As for lovers, well, they'll come and go too. And baby, I hate to say it, most of them - actually pretty much all of them are going to break your heart, but you can't give up because if you give up, you'll never find your soulmate.