I was a mistake. My mother didn't want to have me. I guess she never wanted me. I probably got in her way. I know I must have disgraced her. A divorced woman has enough problems in getting a man, I guess, but one with an illegitimate baby..I wish, I still wish she wanted me.

(About the Bolenders:) They were terribly strict..they didn't mean any harm.It was their religion; they brought me up harshly.

I loved movies. That was the only fun I ever had. The stars were my friends.That was my freedom.I'd sit in the fron row and I'd think how wonderful it would be to be an actress. Whether what I saw was bad or good, it didn't matter.

At night, when all the kids were asleep, I'd perch on the dormitory window sill and look across at the RKO water tank, with RKO in big letters, and light shining like a Hollywood premiere. "My Mother used to work there", I'd whisper. "Some day I'd like to be a star there".

Acting was something golden and beautiful. It was like bright colours Norma Jeane used to see in her daydreams. It wasn't an art.

And by summertine I had a real beau. He was 21, and despite being very sophisticated, he thought I was 18 instead of 13. I was able to fool him by keeping my mouth shut and walking a little fancy. Since taking math class by storm a few months ago, I had practiced walking languorously.

I didn't want to be kissed, and I didn't dream of being seduced by a duke or a movie star. The truth was that despite all my lipstick and mascara and precocious curves, I was as unresponsive as a fossil. But I seemed to affect people quite otherwise.

The world around me then was kind of grim.I had to learn to pretend in order to...I don't know, block the grimness. The whole world seemed sort of closed to me. I felt on the outside of everything and all I could do was to dream up any kind of pretend-game.

I dreamed of myself walking proudly in beautiful clothes and being admired by everyone and overhearing words of praise. I made up the praises and repeated them aloud as if someone else were saying them.

I finally made up my mind. I wanted to be an actress and I was not going to let my lack of confidence ruin my chances.

Blonde hair and breasts, that's how I got started. I couldn't act. All I had was my blonde hair and a body men liked. The reason I got ahead is that I was lucky and met the right men.

They would tell me that I was beautiful, wonderful, you name it.They all acted the same way. I didn't have to say a word. Just take my dress off. They just took their pleasure and ran. I didn't care. I was used to it. (about men she met at the beginning of her career).

I knew I belonged to the public and to the world. Not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anyone or anything else.

I used to look out on the Hollywood night..there must be a thousand 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'm very happy about being under contract to Fox. Everyone at the studio has been wonderful to me and they say they are sure I have a big future ahead of me so that does make me happy (about her first contract to Fox in 1946).

Johhny Hyde was so sweet, but I just couldn't get excited about him as a man. You know, I had all these ideas about tall, dark and handsome men and all that..he wasn't. He had the best clothes in town, but they were like doll's clothes. I didn't mind doing it, but nothing seemed to excite me.It wasn't him; it was me.

(About Joe Schenck:) Get this straight. Mr. Schenck and I were good friends. I know the word around Hollywood was that I was Joe Shenck's girlfriend, but that's a lie. I went to his house because I liked Mr. Schenck and I liked his food and it was better than the Studio Club food. I don't mean to imply that the Studio Club had bad food. I mean, let's say, that Mr. Schenck's cook was better than theirs.

(About "Ladies of the Chorus":) Columbia Pictures had me study with the studio's drama coach, Natasha Lytess. I said I do anything, whatever she thought would make me an actress!

(About "LOC" again:) I kept driving past the cinema where my name was displayed in large type: Marilyn Monroe! I was so excited! I only wish they had displayed the name Norma Jeane, so all the kids who never noticed me could have seen it too. Would they have been surprised!

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 your kiss and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer many times and held out for the fifty.

I was so confused back then, that I'd let any guy or girl do what they wanted, if I thought they were my friends..

My illusions didn't have anything to do with being a fine actress. I knew how third rate I was. I could actually feel my lack of talent, as if it were cheap clothes I was wearing inside. But, my God, how I wanted to learn, to change, to improve!

There was my name, up in lights. I said, "God, somebody's made a mistake!". But there it was, up in lights. And I sat there and said, "Remember, you're not a star!". Yet, there it was, up in lights.

I've never been in a Hollywood fight or feud. I have the most wonderful memory for forgetting things.

I used to say to myself: "What the devil have you got to be proud about, Marilyn Monroe?", and I'd answer: "Everything, everything", and I'd walk slowly and turn my head slowly as if I were a queen.

When you're a failure in Hollywood, that's like starving to death outside a banquet hall, with smells of filet mignon driving you crazy.

I realized that just as I had once fought to get into movies and become an actress, I would now have to fight to become myself and to be able to use my talents. If I didn't fight, I would become a piece of merchandise to be sold off the movie push cart..

When I remember this desperate, lie-telling, dime-hunting Hollywood I knew only a few years ago, I get a little homesick. It was a more human place than the paradise I dreamed of and found. The people in it, the phonies and failures, were more colourful than the great men and successful artists I was to know soon.

When I start a new picture, it's like learning to act all over again. Maybe it's because I know that my screen image doesn't at all represent me, the real me, the way I feel, the way I act and talk. It's something very much apart from my personality, this being a dumb, sexy blonde. I'm neither dumb nor any prettier than any other woman. But they don't think I can act, so I'm stuck playing the sextress. That's my own word, I coined it myself. I'm not an actress, I'm a sextress! And it's really awful..

I felt I belonged..For the first time in my life, I had the feeling that the people seeing me were accepting me and liking me. This is what I've always wanted, I guess. That's why, without realizing the whole meaning of what I was saying, I told Joe that for the first time I felt like I was a movie star.

It's ridiculous. All my movies are ridiculous. At least with Fox. That's why I want to get finished, and then do exactly what I want!

Playing these sexy screen roles, they think that you want to keep at it off screen too. Well, I'm not made that way. Sex isn't that important to me.

I'll never get the right part, anything I really want. My looks are against me. The're too specific.

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?!

I disappeared because if people won't listen to you, there's no point in talking to people. If they won't listen, you'r just banging your head against a wall. If you can't do what they want to do, the thing is to leave. I never got the chance to learn anything in Hollywood. They worked me too fast. They rushed me from one picture into another.

I'm for the individual as opposed to the corporation. The way it is, the individual is the underdog, and with all the things a corporation has going for them, an individual comes out banged on his head. The artist is nothing. It's really tragic.

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.

The Production Code doesn't allow people to show their navels. I don't think even oranges have the right to show theirs!

A struggle with shyness, is in every actor more than anyone can imagine..I'm one of the world's most self-conscious people. I really have to struggle.

I was inspired to study acting, by seeing my own pictures (about her taking lessons at Actors' Studio).

To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation. But I'm working on the foundation.

The trouble with censors is that they worry if a woman has cleavege. They ought to worry if she hasn't any!

I never quite understood it, this "sex-symbol". I always thought symbols are those things you clash together!

(About "Some Like It Hot:) I'm not going back into that film until Wilder reshoots my opening. When Marilyn Monroe comes into a room, nobody's gonna look at Tony Curtis playing Joan Crawford! They're going to be looking at Marilyn Monroe.

Tony Curtis only said that about me ("Kissing Marilyn is like kissing Hitler"), because I wore prettier dresses in the film than he did!

Acting isn't something you do. Instead of doing it, it occurs. If you're going to start with logic, you might as well give up. You can have conscious preparation, but you must have unconscious results.

The girl I played in " Niagara", that was an amoral type, whose plot to kill her husband was attempted with no apparent cost to her conscience. She had been picked up out of a beer parlour, she entirely lacked the social graces and she was overdressed, over-madeup, and completely wanton. The uninhibited deportment in the motel room and the walk seemed natural facets of such a character's portrayal. I honestly believe such a girl would behave in that manner.

What am I afraid of? Do I think I can't act? I know I can act but I'm afraid. I am afraid and I should not be and I must not be.

(About "The Misfits":) It's their film (Miller'sand Huston's). It's about cowboys and horses, they don't need anything else. As for me, they don't need me at all, not as an actress. Only for the money. To be able to put my name on the film. To seduce people to come in and spend their money..

Clark Gable never got angry with me once for blowing a line or being late or anything. He was a gentleman; the best.

My work is important to me. My work is the only ground I've ever had to stand on. Acting is very important.

(when she was asked if many friends had called her to express their support when she was fired from Fox:) "No.."

I might never see that article and it might be okayed by someone in the studio. This is wrong because when I was a little girl I read signed stories in fan magazines and I believed every word the stars said in them. Then I'd try to model my life after the lives of the stars I read about. If I'm going to have that kind of influence, I want to be sure it's because of something I've actually said or written.

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

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.

These people that have been writing all those lies about me..All I know, it's their problem. Those people, I don't even know them, or if we have met it's been brief. Can I take it? Are you kidding? I'm used to it, and remember the old saying: "consider the source".

People are eager to see me. And I remember the years I was unwanted..I feel a queer satisfaction in punishing people who are wanting me now. But it's not really them I'm punishing. It's the long-ago people who didn't want Norma Jeane. The later I am, the happier Norma Jeane grows!

It's funny how 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.

The only people I care about are the people in Times Square, across the street form the theater, who can't get as close as I come in. If I had light make-up on, they'd never see me. This make-up is for them.

A lot of people think of me as innocent, so that's the way I behave to them. If they saw the demon in me, they would hate me.

And I want to say that the people -if I am a star- the people made me a star. There was no studio and no person..but the people made me a star.

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.

Everyone's just laughing at me, I hate it. Big breasts, big ass, big deal. Can't I be anything else?

With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else's ideas about you, but what's important is how you feel about yourself- for survival and living day to day with what comes up.