Looking back, I guess I used to play-act all the time. For one thing, it meant I could live in a more interesting world than the one around me.

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

I didn't pay much attention to the whistles and whoops, in fact, I didn't quite hear them. I was full of a strange feeling, as if I were two people. One of them was Norma Jeane from the orphanage who belonged to nobody; the other was someone whose name I didn't know. But I knew where she belonged; she belonged to the ocean and the sky and the whole world.

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!'

I want to be an artist, not... a celluloid aphrodisiac.

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I'd worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: 'Don't hide these things from me. I'd rather you ask me these things straight out, and I'll answer all your questions.'

It takes a smart brunette to play a dumb blonde.