Great Throughts Treasury

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

"Only parts of us will ever touch only parts of others."

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

"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."

"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."

"People respect you because they feel you've survived hard times and endured, and although you've become famous, you haven't become phony."

"Please don't make me a joke. End the interview with what I believe. 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.... If fame goes by, so long, I've had you, fame. If it goes by, I've always known it was fickle. So at least it's something I experienced, but that's not where I live."

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

"Seeing your name in front page headlines as if you were some kind of a major accident or gun battle is always startling. No matter how often you see it you don't get used to it. You keep thinking-"That's about me. The whole country's reading about me. Maybe the world is."

"Selfish, impatient and a little insecure."

"Sex is a part of nature. I go along with nature."

"She was a girl who knew how to be happy even when she was sad. And that?s important?you know."

"Smile on."

"So keep your head high, keep your chin up, and most importantly, keep smiling, because life?s a beautiful thing and there?s so much to smile about."

"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."

"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't expect me to be serious about my work."

"Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had."

"Someone said to me, 'If fifty percent of the experts in Hollywood said you had no talent and should give up, what would you do?' My answer was then and still is, 'If a hundred percent told me that, all one hundred percent would be wrong.'"

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

"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."

"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."

"Sometimes things fall apart so that better things can fall together."

"Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn?t that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you."

"Suicide is a person?s privilege. I don?t believe it?s a sin or a crime. It?s your right if you want to, though it doesn?t get you anywhere."

"That?s the way you feel when you?re beaten inside. You don?t feel angry at those who?ve beaten you. You just feel ashamed."

"That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. But if I'm going to be a symbol of something, I'd rather it be sex than some of the things we've got symbols of.... I just hate to be a thing."

"That's the way you feel when you're beaten inside. You don't feel angry at those who've beaten you. You just feel ashamed."

"The ?public? scares me, but people I trust."

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

"The chief drawback with men is that they are too talkative."

"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."

"The first effect marriage had on me was to increase my lack of interest in sex.... Actually our marriage was a sort of friendship with sexual privileges."

"The nicest thing for me is sleep; then at least I can dream."

"The only thing a star asks is to be allowed to twinkle."

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

"The 'public' scares me, but people I trust."

"The real lover is the man who can thrill you by kissing your forehead or smiling into your eyes or just staring into space."

"The studio people want me to do "Good-bye Charlie" for the movies, but I'm not going to do it. I don't like the idea of playing a man in a woman's body ? you know? It just doesn't seem feminine."

"The thing I want more than anything else? I want to have children. I used to feel for every child I had, I would adopt another."

"The trouble with censors is that they worry if a girl has cleavage. They ought to worry if she hasn't any."

"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."

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

"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!'"

"The worst thing that happens to people when they dress up and go to a party is that they leave their real selves at home. They're like people on a stage playing somebody else. They play that they're important, and they want you to meet their importance, not themselves."

"There are many times when a woman will ask another girl friend how she likes her new hat. She will reply, 'Fine,' but slap her hand to her forehead the minute the girl leaves to yipe, 'What a horror!'"

"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."

"There is just no comparison between having a dinner date with a man and staying home playing canasta with the girls."

"There is nothing positive about being fat. And there is nothing positive about loving yourself. We all need to conform to society?s expectations of who we are, because if we don?t, who will? Life is more enjoyable when you are thin and pretty. I was never fat a day in my life and i never will."

"There isn't anybody that looks like me without clothes on."

"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."