The following are 50 Marilyn Monroe quotes. Born, Norma Jean Baker, she was the “Candle in the Wind” that Elton John gracefully sang about. Her life was one of fast fame and tragedy. Many people only see her as the home wrecker that slept with the president at the time but for those who read more into her life and found out she was actually a very smart person, her life gives inspiration to some people if only to remind them that life is short and money isn’t everything.
1. “Your candle burned out long before your legend ever did.” by Elton John (Candle in the Wind)
2. “If you’re gonna be two-faced at least make one of them pretty.”
3. “I don’t forgive people because I’m weak, I forgive them because I am strong enough to know people make mistakes.”
4. “Just because Marilyn Monroe might have blown her nose in a room doesn’t make it historic.” by Michael Mueller
5. “The real lover is the man who can thrill you by kissing your forehead or smiling into your eyes or just staring into space.”
6. “I always sleep with my mouth open. I know because it’s open when I wake up.”
7. “One night some short weeks ago, for the first time in her not always happy life, Marilyn Monroe’s soul sat down alone to a quiet supper from which it did not rise.” by Clifford Odets
8. “Men are so willing to respect anything that bores them.”
9. “Ever notice how ‘What the hell’ is always the right answer?”
10. “Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.”
11. “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.”
12. “…If you can make a girl laugh – you can make her do anything…”
13. “Beneath the makeup and behind the smile I am just a girl who wishes for the world.”
14. “It’s often just enough to be with someone. I don’t need to touch them. Not even talk. A feeling passes between you both. You’re not alone.”
15. “You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself.”
16. “The nicest thing for me is sleep, then at least I can dream.”
17. “We are all of us stars, and we deserve to twinkle.”
18. “I don’t mind living in a man’s world as long as I can be a woman in it.”
19. “Keep smiling, because life is a beautiful thing and there’s so much to smile about.”
20. “Sex is a part of nature. I go along with nature.”
21. “I’m very definitely a woman and I enjoy it.”
22. “If I’d observed all the rules, I’d never have got anywhere.”
23. “We are all born sexual creatures, thank God, but it’s a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift.”
24. “People respect you because they feel you’ve survived hard times and endured, and although you’ve become famous, you haven’t become phony.”
25. “Dogs never bite me. Just humans.”
26. “Wouldn’t it be nice to be like men, just getting notches in your belt, having affairs with the most attractive men . . . and not getting emotionally involved.”
27. “Sometimes things fall apart so that better things can fall together”
28. “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.”
29. “A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.”
30. “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 have unconscious results.”
31. “All a girl really wants is for one guy to prove to her that they are not all the same.”
32. “Well behaved women rarely make history.”
33. “Beneath the makeup and behind the smile I’m just a girl who wishes for the world.”
34. “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.”
35. “Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.”
36. “I feel as though it’s all happening to someone right next to me. I’m close, I can feel it, I can hear it, but it isn’t really me.”
37. “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.”
38. “I like actors very much, but to marry one would be like marrying your brother. You look too much alike in the mirror.”
39. “How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.”
40. “A career is born in public, talent in privacy.”
41. “I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to look like one.”
42. “Dreaming about being an actress is more exciting than being one.”
43. “I’m selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”
44. “Imperfection is beauty. Madness is genius and it is better to be absolutely ridiculous then absolutely boring.”
45. “In Hollywood a girl’s virtue is much less important than her hairdo.”
46. “I’ve been on a calendar, but never on time.”
47. “It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.”
48. “Husbands are chiefly good lovers when they are betraying their wives.”
49. “It takes a smart brunette to play a dumb blonde.”
50. “The trouble with censors is that they worry if a girl has cleavage. They ought to worry if she hasn’t any.”