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Marilyn: 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?
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Marilyn: I don't understand why people aren't a little more generous with each other.
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Marilyn: An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument. Isaac Stern takes good care of his violin. What if everybody jumped on his violin?
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Marilyn: Men who think that a woman's past love affairs lessen her love for them are usually stupid and weak. A woman can bring a new love to each man she loves, providing there are not too many.
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Marilyn: The only people I care about are the people in Times Square, across the street from the theatre, who can't get close as I come in. If I had light make-up on, they'd never see me. This make-up is for them...
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Marilyn: Ever since I became a movie star I've been really weird.
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Marilyn: I'm pretty, but I'm not beautiful. I sin, but I'm not the devil. I'm good, but I'm not an angel.
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Marilyn: (on stardom) It scares me. All those people I don't know, sometimes they're so emotional. I mean, if they love you that much without knowing you, they can also hate you the same way.
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Marilyn: A smart girl leaves before she is left.
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Marilyn: I am invariably late for appointments - sometimes as much as two hours. I've tried to change my ways but the things that make me late are too strong, and too pleasing.
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Marilyn: [Hollywood is] a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.
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Marilyn: 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.
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Marilyn: Only the public can make a star. It's the studios who try to make a system out of it.
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Marilyn: (on her husband Arthur Miller) He wouldn't have married me if I had been nothing but a dumb blonde.
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Marilyn: It's better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone.
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Marilyn: I don't mind making jokes, but I don't want to look like one.
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Marilyn: It stirs up envy, fame does. People you run into feel that, well, who does she think she is, Marilyn Monroe? They feel fame gives them some kind of privilege to walk up to you and say anything to you, you know, of any kind of nature - and it won't hurt your feelings.
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Marilyn: 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 yourself...
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Marilyn: I want to be a big star more than anything. It's something precious.
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Marilyn: I want to grow old without face-lifts...I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face that I have made.
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Marilyn: I'm a failure as a woman. My men expect so much of me, because of the image they've made of me and that I've made of myself, as a sex symbol. Men expect so much, and I can't live up to it.
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Marilyn: Imperfection is beauty; madness is genius. And it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.
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Marilyn: 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 the individual comes out banged on her head. The artist is nothing. It's really tragic.
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Marilyn: 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.
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Marilyn: 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.
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Marilyn: What good is it being Marilyn Monroe? Why can't I just be an ordinary woman? A woman who can have a family...I'd settle for just one baby. My own baby.
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Marilyn: I love to do the things the censors won't pass.
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Marilyn: People respect you because they feel you've survived hard times and endured, and although you've become famous, you haven't become phony.
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Marilyn: I am trying to prove to myself that I am a person. Then maybe I'll convince myself that I'm an actress.
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Marilyn: I don't know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot.
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Marilyn: If I'd observed all the rules, I'd never have got anywhere.
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Marilyn: I don't want to make money. I just want to be wonderful.
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Marilyn: I've never liked the name Marilyn. I've often wished that I had held out that day for Jean Monroe. But I guess it's too late to do anything about it now.
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Marilyn: 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 anything or anyone else.
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Marilyn: Husbands are chiefly good lovers when they are betraying their wives.
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Marilyn: Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.
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Marilyn: A career is born in public -- talent in privacy.
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Marilyn: Fame will go by and, so long, I've had you, fame. If it goes by, I've always known it was fickle.
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Marilyn: I used to think as I looked out on the Hollywood night, 'There must be thousands of 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.'
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Marilyn: No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they are pretty, even if they aren't.
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Marilyn: Sex is part of nature. I go along with nature.
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Marilyn: That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. But if I'm going to be a symbol of something, I'd rather have it sex than some other things we've got symbols of.
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Marilyn: I have too many fantasies to be a housewife. I guess I am a fantasy.
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Marilyn: An actress is not a machine, but they treat you like a machine. A money machine.
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Marilyn: I've been on a calendar, but never on time.
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Marilyn: The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.