Quotes

To establish yourself as an actress, you have to become well known. A girl just starting out, I would tell her to concentrate on acting, but she doesn't have to go around wearing blankets.

Stars were made to suffer, and I am a star.

I don't want to get involved in the racial situation at the expense of losing fans. I wouldn't say anything too strong, but I do know that God created us equal and we're not living up to it.

Carrying a baby is the most rewarding experience a woman can enjoy.

I will never be satisfied. Life is one constant search for betterment for me.

I don't particularly enjoy publicity, it seems to just follow me around.

I like being a pin-up girl, there's nothing wrong with it.

A lot of happiness can be brought to the mentally distraught by a little understanding.

We eat a lot of lean meat and fresh vegetables. You are what you eat, you know. When I'm 100, I'll still be doing pin-ups.

War is a foolish, childish, animalistic, unthinking, unintelligent way of trying to accomplish a purpose.

I want to earn my own way, I like having nice things, but I've never accepted anything I haven't earned.

I'd like ten more babies and ten more chihuahuas and a few Academy Awards. Meanwhile, I enjoy being a sex symbol and making people happy.

No one wants to see or read about a dull subject. I don't consider myself a dull subject.

I've got the strangest build. It's big in the hips, small in the waist and I've got these enormous... shoulders.

Looks don't regulate a girl's body temperature, at least not this girl's body temperature. Intelligence in a man is the keynote and no girl in her right mind is going to go shopping for a man who's handsome and husky alone.

To function as an actress, I have to be in love. I have to have that incentive to work.

I didn't come to Hollywood to be the girl next door. I came to be a movie star.

My father was the only man I ever knew who really loved me unselfishly, who never used me for personal gain.

Once you were a starlet. Then you're a star. Can you be a starlet again?

If you want the best things in life, you have to earn them for yourself.

I like the California style of living.

[Upon learning that 20th Century-Fox had lied to her about being considered for the lead in a film about the life of Jean Harlow] I have thousands of letters here, from people all over the world, saying I am the perfect Harlow... even naturally have her mannerisms of caressing my body and arms in that way. But no, they can't see me playing the dramatic side of Harlow's life.

I guess a lot of people think that a girl who shows her bosom and wears tight dresses can't be close to God. God has always been close to me. Only He knew what was in my heart.

I have always considered my career self and my personal self as two different and separate people. There's a Jayne Mansfield at home, a wife and devoted mother, and there's Jayne the sex symbol, which is my career. I have always kept them completely apart and separate.

Sex appeal is a wonderful, warm, womanly, healthy feeling. If you're a woman it's womanly, if you're not it's manly... it comes only from inside... it's an effervescent desire to enjoy life.

You know which title I like best? I like to be called mother.

Men are those creatures with two legs and eight hands.

If you're going to do something wrong, do it big, because the punishment is the same either way.

The real stars are not good actors or actresses. They're personalities.

I love sex... It should be animalistic, it should be sadistic, it should at times be masochistic... There are few rules and moral conventions.

Nothing risque, nothing gained.