"She was a very good model. I had her on easily a hundred magazine covers. Her and her figure was well-known long before she became Marilyn Monroe. But when she saw a camera, any camera, she lit up and was totally different. The moment the shot was over, she fell back into her not very interesting position. I don’t know how to explain that, but that’s what makes a good model."
- Laszlo Willinger, photographer
“I moved down the assembly line, taking shots of the most attractive employees. None was especially out of the ordinary. I came to a pretty girl putting on propellers and raised the camera to my eye. She had curly ash blond hair and her face was smudged with dirt. I snapped her picture and walked on. Then I stopped, stunned. She was beautiful. Half child, half woman, her eyes held something that touched and intrigued me.”
- Private David Conover
"An appointment was made, and I couldn't sleep the night before. If she didn't like me, that would be the end of my modeling career-before it started. Calling in sick, I took the day off to go see Miss Snively. I was then nineteen, my marriage was strained, and I was thinking of a divorce. When I wrote to my husband, I explained I did not love him anymore, that I had a chance for a career as a model, and that I wanted freedom to pursue my career. I wanted a divorce. Jim was still in Shanghai. He wrote asking if I would wait until he returned from overseas to see if we could patch things up and make a go of our marriage. But I knew our marriage was over. A career was more important to me. I wanted to become an actress more than ever. Perhaps through modeling I would get the break I needed."
- Marilyn Monroe
"Then they started putting me in bathing suits, and all of a sudden I became popular. Photographers liked working with me. They said I knew how to take direction. I began having lots of location assignments. It was like I had been discovered. I was in great demand for bathing suit pictures."
- Marilyn Monroe
"When I saw myself in the mirror, it just wasn't the real me. They had converted me to a golden blonde. At first I couldn't get used to myself."
- Marilyn Monroe
"[Norma Jeane was] very serious, very ambitious, and always pleasant to be with. There was only one problem for her. She did so many covers that for a while she was considered overexposed-the magazine and advertising people had seen so much of her that after a year she couldn't get much work."
- Lydia Bodrero Reed (Blue Book Agency model, 1945-1946)