I always have a full-length mirror next to the camera when I’m doing publicity stills. That way, I know how I look.

Marilyn Monroe

I was brought up differently than the average American child because the average child is brought up expecting to be happy.

Marilyn Monroe

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

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 you.

Marilyn Monroe

Fame is like caviar, you know – it’s good to have caviar but not when you have it at every meal.

Marilyn Monroe

I don’t want everybody to see exactly where I live, what my sofa or my fireplace looks like.

Marilyn Monroe

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

Marilyn Monroe

I’m looking forward to becoming a marvelous – excuse the word marvelous – character actress. like Marie Dressler, like Will Rogers.

Marilyn Monroe

If you spend your life competing with business men, what do you have? A bank account and ulcers!

Marilyn Monroe

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument. Isaac Stern takes good care of his violin. What if everybody jumped on his violin?

Marilyn Monroe

Next to my husband, and along with Marlon Brando, I think that Yves Montand is the most attractive man I’ve ever met.

Marilyn Monroe

The fact is that I find more most men are more open, more generous, and much more stimulating than the majority of females I know.

Marilyn Monroe

What good am I? I can’t have kids. I can’t cook. I’ve been divorced three times. Who would want me?

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

I like actors very much, but to marry one would be like marrying your brother. You look too much alike in the mirror.

Marilyn Monroe

The public doesn’t mind people living together without being married, providing they don’t overdo it.

Marilyn Monroe

Only the public can make a star. It’s the studios who try to make a system out of it.

Marilyn Monroe