She said it to LIFE. The line runs in the long first-person monologue that associate editor Richard Meryman assembled from taped conversations, published in the issue dated 3 August 1962. Quote Investigator ↗ places it at page 36, column 3, and gives Monroe the credit — and the wording that circulates today is the wording LIFE printed.
“That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing” Marilyn Monroe, as told to Richard Meryman, "Fame will go by and—so long, I've had you," LIFE, vol. 53, no. 5, 3 August 1962, p. 36.
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In context
Evoking the world of Marilyn Monroe — American actress and model. Theme: "That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The LIFE interview, August 1962
Publication
LIFE, Vol. 53, No. 5 — 3 August 1962 (Time Inc.)
Article
Fame will go by and—so long, I’ve had you
Interviewer
Richard Meryman, LIFE associate editor
Location
Starts p. 31; the line at p. 36, column 3
I never quite understood it — this sex symbol — I always thought symbols were those things you clash together! That’s the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing. But if I’m going to be a symbol of something I’d rather have it sex than some other things they’ve got symbols of!
LIFE, 3 Aug 1962 · p. 36
The famous sentences are the middle of a joke. Monroe sets it up by pretending to mishear symbol as cymbal — the crash-together kind — and finishes by saying that if she has to be a symbol of something, sex beats most of the alternatives. Nearly every version in circulation keeps only the two sentences in between.
3 August 1962 — LIFE. The remark appears in the monologue LIFE built from a series of taped conversations between Monroe and associate editor Richard Meryman. Quote Investigator ↗ cites the issue as Vol. 53, No. 5, start page 31, quote at page 36, column 3, and reproduces the full passage — pun and all.
Later in 1962 — into book form. Richard Schickel’s The Stars carried the line in its Marilyn chapter within the same year, already softened to “I just hate being a thing” — a page QI verified with scans ↗. The 1962 Bonanza Books edition is catalogued at the Internet Archive ↗.
1972 — the sentences get shuffled.Wikiquote’s Quotes section ↗ carries the remark with its clauses re-ordered — the “I’d rather it be sex” line moved ahead of “I hate to be a thing” — and sources it to Ms. magazine (August 1972), p. 40 rather than to LIFE.
1992 — the reference-book version.QI records ↗ that The New York Public Library Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations printed a clipped “A sex symbol becomes a thing. I hate being a thing,” crediting not LIFE but Jeremy Pascall and Clive Jeavons’ A Pictorial History of Sex in the Movies (1975).
The wording comes from a magazine article first published on 3 August 1962 — far too recent to be public domain by age, so we treat the LIFE text as in copyright to its publisher, Time Inc. Monroe’s spoken words reached print through Richard Meryman’s edited transcript, which is why the published passage is LIFE’s as much as hers; quote it briefly with attribution rather than reproducing the article.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What goes wrong with this one
Marilyn Monroe is one of the internet’s most abused quote sources — enough that a genuine line like this one gets doubted on sight. This one is real. What goes wrong is the wording, the sourcing, and the company it keeps.
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The wording“I just hate being a thing” Variant
LIFE printed “I just hate to be a thing.” The being form entered circulation almost at once: Quote Investigator ↗ shows Richard Schickel using it in 1962 and a 1992 quotation dictionary shortening it further to “A sex symbol becomes a thing. I hate being a thing.”
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The orderWikiquote’s sourced entry Re-ordered
Wikiquote ↗ lists the remark with its clauses swapped and cites Ms. magazine (August 1972), p. 40 — a reprint a decade downstream of the LIFE original, not the source itself.
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The missing jokeNearly every meme version Truncated
The setup is a pun: Monroe says she never understood “this sex symbol” because she always thought symbols were the things you clash together. QI reproduces the whole passage ↗. Cropped to two sentences it reads as pure lament; in place it is a joke that curdles.
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A neighbouring line“A sex symbol is a heavy load to carry when one is tired, hurt and bewildered” Not Monroe
✓The quote is genuine and the popular wording is the original: Monroe said it to LIFE associate editor Richard Meryman, and it ran in the issue dated 3 August 1962. Quote Investigator ↗ places it at page 36 of that issue and concludes she should receive the credit.
Context
Why it mattered
Meryman sat down with Monroe after she had been fired from Something’s Got to Give. He taped hours of conversation and then did the thing he had made his signature at LIFE: cut the interviewer out entirely and assemble the subject’s words into continuous first-person speech. That format is why the line lands like a confession rather than an answer — there is no question standing in front of it.
And it is self-analysis, not self-pity. Monroe does not refuse the label; she says that if she must be a symbol of something, sex beats most of the alternatives. Her objection is grammatical. A symbol is a thing, and a thing has no interior. In the same stretch of the article she defends sexuality as natural and as the origin of art — the complaint is about being flattened into an emblem, not about the subject of the emblem.
“I always thought symbols were those things you clash together!”
Why the LIFE monologue reads the way it does
Meryman built his reputation at LIFE on the celebrity monologue — the reporter’s questions stripped out, the subject’s words assembled into a self-portrait on the page. His Wikipedia entry ↗ records that he worked from a total of about eight hours of tape and that LIFE ran the result in the issue dated 3 August 1962.
The tapes outlived the article: the same source ↗ notes they became the basis of the 1992 HBO programme Marilyn: The Last Interview.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Born Norma Jeane Mortenson on 1 June 1926, Marilyn Monroe spent a decade as a top-billed Hollywood star, best known for playing comic “blonde bombshell” roles and for becoming one of the most recognisable sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s. She died on 4 August 1962. The remark on this page comes from the taped conversations she gave LIFE after being fired from Something’s Got to Give — a rare stretch of her talking, at length and in her own voice, about what the label had cost her.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Marilyn Monroe, “Marilyn Monroe lets her hair down about being famous: Fame will go by and—so long, I’ve had you,” as told to Richard Meryman, LIFE 53, no. 5 (3 August 1962): 31–36; the line at p. 36, col. 3. Traced and verified by Quote Investigator.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/thats-the-trouble-a-sex-symbol-becomes-a-thing-i-just-hate/