Now, aren't you ashamed of those suspicions you had about me?

“Among the fellow passengers were newlyweds Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Mary Pickford, the world’s most popular honeymooners and the first film stars I ever met. […] I found myself being photographed with Mr. Fairbanks during a game of shuffleboard. As I stood beside him I tried with shy, inadequate words to tell him of my adulation. He was a splendidly trained athlete and acrobat, affable and warmed by success and well-being. A gentleman in the true sense of the word […] I’ve doggedly striven to keep tanned ever since, only because of a desire to emulate his healthful appearance.” – Cary Grant in his autobiography, Archie Leach

"You are not just here to fill space or be a background character in someone else’s movie. Consider this: nothing would be the same if you did not exist. Every place you have ever been and everyone you have ever spoken to would be different without you. We are all connected, and we are all affected by the decisions and even the existence of those around us."
-David Niven

"These men poured a whole bottle of bourbon into me! No, they didn't give me a chaser!
-Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest (1959)

"Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable."
- The Wizard of Oz (1939)

-Seven hundred dollars! And sex didn't even enter into it, I suppose? -Sex always has something to do with it, dear.
-The Palm Beach Story (1942)

No money, no material reward is comparable to the praise, the shouts of well done and accompanying pat on the back of one's fellowman. Applause and laughter in the theater have a similar effect; and sometimes, today, I stand with Russell Downing, the manager of the finest, largest cinema in the world, the Radio City Music Hall in New York, in a quiet darkened corner, and listen to that huge audience roaring with laughter at something I've done, the tilt of my head or a facial reaction, and joy seems to burst within me.
To think that all those people, for even a moment, were able to forget their personal problems and troubles and concertedly laugh with or at me. [...]
-Cary Grant in his autobiography, Archie Leach

I used to apologize for every little thing I said or did, or hadn’t said or hadn’t done, or forgotten to say, etc.; I used to apologize for living. Now I’ve given it up — I mean, apologizing. Not living; I’ve only just started that.

-Cary Grant at 59 years of age, in his autobiography, Archie Leach

It has been written that I am rude to autograph seekers. That’s not true. I am rude only to rude autograph seekers.
Still, there are compensations, and the ceaseless daily bother is forgotten when occasionally some considerate person comes quietly alongside me to say “Mr. G., I just want to thank you on behalf of my family and myself for the many happy hours you’ve given us.” I want to embrace him or her before they slip from my view, leaving me aglow and breathing easily again.

Do you know about trouble dolls? I think they’re Guatemalan, and they’ve been given to me a lot over the years. The years in Peru, the years in Santa Fe—the floors and the ledges and the shelves were littered with trouble dolls, and my life was littered with trouble. Supposedly, you can pick up these little, handmade, beautiful dolls and tell them your worries, your troubles, then place them in their box and they will worry for you. So you can get some sleep. Well, I put all my troubles in cocaine and booze and heroine and pot and guns and pussy. Those were my trouble dolls. I should have confided in the dolls—the little, handmade ones—more often.

I have a point. I swear I do.

Marilyn was like a trouble doll for a lot of people: A lot of people needed her because she was beautiful and she was sweet and she was pretty much what a lot of people believed was a perfect woman—a sexual machine with a heart. And a lot of people needed her because they wanted her to fail or to cry or to die, because they wanted to believe that all of her gifts—physical and otherwise—wouldn’t save her or make her happy. So the ugly and the mean-spirited could feel better about their lives and their various lacks. And a lot of people looked at her and saw money and sex and power and an evil sort of joy that comes from getting off. She was a product, a commodity to them. And a lot of people needed her because she so clearly needed a friend, needed some love, and a lot of people really wanted to give this to her.

So Marilyn Monroe was this creamy, sweet, beautiful trouble doll for a lot of people, and we whispered to her image or her memory and told her what we needed, what we desired, and then we believed that things would happen or change.

And she got put in her box and was put on an eternal shelf, where we can continue to ask of her what we need.

-Dennis Hopper in an interview with James Grissom