It’s nice to be included in people’s fantasies but you also like to be accepted for your own sake.

In discussing fame, Monroe distinguishes providing an escape for audiences from meeting people on equal terms. She wants to be accepted as a person rather than treated as a commodity, and goes on to describe the disappointment of acquaintances telling stories about her to the press.

Being desired as an image is not the same as being valued as an individual.

This is not a fictional seductress speaking in a film. It is Monroe describing the difference between the public fantasy attached to her and her own need for ordinary personal recognition.

Emotions

• There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock. Charles Bukowski
• So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be. Stephen Chbosky
• Choosing seemed to me not so much selecting as rejecting what I did not select. André Gide
• Look at you comforting others with the words you wish someone had said to you. (not found) Fyodor Dostoevsky
• But when you’re famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way.

• themarilynmonroecollection.com/collection/marilyn-monroe-letter-from-richard-meryman

Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Monroe interviewed by Richard Meryman, LIFE (1962), authorized edited reprint in The Guardian, Great interviews of the 20th century (September 2007). Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/accepted-for-your-own-sake/ (29 October 2026).

Have a different wording, or a source we missed? Check it or submit it.

Do you hold the rights to anything on this page? Tell us.