FAMOUS QUOTES FROM MARILYN MONROE:
“She was so adorable, so witty, such incredible fun and more physically attractive than anyone I could have imagined, apart from herself on the screen.”
–Laurence Olivier
Every woman on the planet wants to be norma jeane, but the only one who could be her was Norma Jeane – and god, was she something
When she became a blonde, the entire country ran out of blonde hair dye in two weeks – that’s how much impact she had on her fans
Every day she gets bigger – like an exploding galaxy – there is no stopping this phenomenon
She is bigger than life – and prettier than anyone before her or after her
The camera loves her – the world adores her – need we say more?
“Grace McKee arranged the marriage for me, I never had a choice. There’s not much to say about it. They couldn’t support me, and they had to work out something. And so I got married.”
– Marilyn on her early marriage to James Dougherty
“A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.”
“I used to think as I looked at 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.'”
“I had the radio on.” [Q. Did you have anything on ?]
“Chanel No. 5.” [Q. What do you wear to bed ?]
“I’m not interested in money, I just want to be wonderful.”
“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…”
“A dollar for your thoughts…”
“I’ve been on a calendar, but never on time.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Dogs never bite me. Just humans.”
“Sex is a part of nature. I go along with nature.”
“Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, Fame. If it goesby, I’ve always known it was fickle.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation. But I’m working on the foundation.”
“If I had observed all the rules, I’d never have gotten anywhere.” “I want to grow old without face-lifts… I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face that I have made.”
“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.”
“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 intelligent?”
On posing nude for the calendar in 1949: “My sin has been no more than I have written, posing for the nude because I desperately needed fifty dollars to get my car out of hock.”
“An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument. Isaac Stern takes good care of his violin. What if everyone jumped on his violin?”
“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.”
“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’texpect me to be serious about my work.”
“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.”
“You know, when you grow up you can get kind of sour, I mean, that’s the way it can go.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice to be like men and get notches in your belt and sleep with most attractive men and not get emotionally involved?”
“The trouble with censors is they worry if a girl has cleavage. They ought to worry if she hasn’t any.”
“I used to say to myself, ‘What the devil have you got to be proud about, Marilyn Monroe?’ And I’d answer, ‘Everything, everything.’
“She used to come by the house with Beebe Goddard from high school. They had quite a ways to walk. So I would drive them home. … She was going to have to go back to the orphanage because Doc Goddard and Grace Goddard were moving to Virginia. His company was transferring him. And grace talked to my mother and asked if I would like to marry Norma Jean. I had taken her to a dance before, and I realized she was a big girl for 15 or 16. And she was — she was a sweetheart. ”
Jim Dougherty
Grace and Erwin arranged a marriage in June 1942 between Norma Jean, 16, and Jim Dougherty, 21 that lasted 4 years. They divorced in September of ’46.
“She became a movie actress. … She wanted to live together and maintain a relationship, and I told her, no, that I wanted a family. And I said good-bye to her on the porch of Aunt Anna’s. And that’s when she told me that her name was going to be Marilyn Monroe. … It’s a shame that she had to give up half her life for that fame. .. I loved her. I was very much in love with Norma Jean. ”
Jim Dougherty
In the last interview before her death, Marilyn pleaded unsuccessfully with a reporter to end his article like this: “What I really want to say: That what the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers. Please don’t make me a joke. End the interview with what I believe”. The media always ignored what Marilyn Monroe really believed.
