Quotes from Marilyn Monroe

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

Just because you fail once doesn't mean you're gonna fail at everything.

One of the best things that ever happened to me is that I'm a woman. That is the way all females should feel.

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.

Respect is one of life's greatest treasures. I mean, what does it all add up to if you don't have that?

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.

I restore myself when I'm alone.

Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.

I have always had a talent for irritating women since I was fourteen.

A woman knows by intuition, or instinct, what is best for herself.

What good is it being Marilyn Monroe? Why can't I just be an ordinary woman?

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.

Experts on romance say for a happy marriage there has to be more than a passionate love. For a lasting union, they insist, there must be a genuine liking for each other. Which, in my book, is a good definition for friendship.

Men are so willing to respect anything that bores them.

If your man is a sports enthusiast, you may have to resign yourself to his spouting off in a monotone on a prize fight, football game or pennant race.

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!'

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.

All little girls should be told they are pretty, even if they aren't.

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

Men who think that a woman's past love affairs lessen her love for them are usually stupid and weak.

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.

An actress is not a machine, but they treat you like a machine. A money machine.

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.

It's not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on.