Marilyn Monroe

I was honoured when they asked me to appear at the president's birthday rally in Madison Square Garden. There was like a hush over the whole place when I came on to sing 'Happy Birthday,' like if I had been wearing a slip, I would have thought it was showing or something. I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, what if no sound comes out!'

If I close my eyes and think of Hollywood, all I see is one big varicose vein.

I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.

Nights are not just for sleep.

I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am pretty, but not beautiful. I have friends, but I am not the peacemaker.

Don't you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn't marry a girl just because she's pretty, but my goodness, doesn't it help?

I enjoy acting when you really hit it right. And I guess I've always had too much fantasy to be only a housewife.

Enjoy the fact that you're a woman and men will enjoy it too.

There is a future, and I can't wait to get to it

Never regret anything because at one time it was exactly what you wanted.

I don't want to play sex roles any more. I'm tired of being known as the girl with the shape.

Fame has a special burden, which I might as well state here and now. I don't mind being burdened with being glamorous and sexual. But what goes with it can be a burden

Of course, it does depend on the people, but sometimes I'm invited places to kind of brighten up a dinner table like a musician who'll play the piano after dinner, and I know you're not really invited for yourself. You're just an ornament.

If a star or studio chief or any other great movie personages find themselves sitting among a lot of nobodies, they get frightened - as if somebody was trying to demote them.

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.

Beauty and femininity are ageless and can't be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers won't like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour; it's based on femininity.

Consider the fellow. He never spends his time telling you about his previous night's date. You get the idea he has eyes only for you and wouldn't think of looking at another woman.

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.

When I was 11, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world.

Fame is fickle, and I know it. It has its compensations but it also has its drawbacks, and I've experienced them both.

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