Valerie Harper Quotes

When you age, you can do all kinds of roles. You don’t have to look great. You can be the mom, the aunt. You can have a small part. You’re an actor.

Stop working so hard at being interesting and focus on what’s outside yourself. There are universes out there that need to be explored. And, an interested person is extremely interesting.

Keep your chin up, and don’t go to the funeral – mine or yours or your loved one‘s – until the day of the funeral because then you miss the life that you have left.

All of us are going to die. Every single one of us. So, while you’re alive, be alive.

Life has sweetness to it and a beauty and a power that I wanted to celebrate.

I’ve had very deep moments of sadness. What I do is really sob, really cry, do whatever it is, and then kind of release it. Then I can go cook dinner or make a phone call to a friend.

Forgiving is giving up the wish that things could have been different. They weren’t. That’s the past. Let it go.

I used to get some ego thing out of saying I wasn’t a star, just an actress. Forget it. I’m a star. I wanted it. I worked for it. I got it.

I first met Rhoda Morgenstern in the spring of 1970.

There are times when I cry. I’ll sit in the chair and feel the depression, let it seethe. Then it starts to go away, and I find myself laughing, saying, ‘Well, that was dramatic.’

I never smoked in my life. Neither did my mother. And so many women I meet whose mothers or aunts or whoever who have gotten lung cancer were no-time smokers.

I am pretty heavy into causes. I’m an active Democrat, I boycott grapes, and I work for prison reform.

We think it’s food that matters the most, but exercise and food both matter.

Every five minutes, every hour, every day, every year that you waste worrying about your cancer – you have forfeited time that you could have been alive having fun.

I don’t know a great deal about Alzheimer‘s – just what it does.

We all have a way to contribute, to your community, to your family, whatever it is you can do.

The first Broadway play I ever saw was ‘The Bad Seed‘ by Maxwell Anderson and with Patty McCormack. ‘The Bad Seed’ was from an extraordinary novel by William March.

With imagery, as actors know, you can make up anything you want to. You can put yourself in icy water to get rid of this or that.

When I heard ‘incurable‘… incurable is a tough word.

All of us have the same thing coming – death. It’s waiting. But I don’t want to go. I want to live to be 102!

Cancer reminds me of a very bad but tenacious performer who, although no one wants to see, insists on doing an encore, having a return engagement, making a comeback and, worst of all, going on tour.

Knowing that you have something you have to deal with, rising to the occasion, builds character.

I’m painfully middle class.

I wouldn’t give people advice except to share with them what I’m doing, which is, You’re alive – stay alive.

I have an intention to live each moment fully.

The disease I have is quite a rare cancer, and it is located in a limited area – a very widespread area, but narrow. So a lot can happen if the cancer starts getting really aggressive, pressing on parts of the brain and causing me to lose either my speech or my ability to think, etc.

Actors often want to look like they’re comfortable. You want to go into an audition saying, ‘I’m your gal. I’m what you need.’ Yet you don’t want to push.

Talk about a woman of a certain age – Pearl Buck was a great prototype of continuing to work. She was in the hospital dying of cancer, and in the next room was her secretary, typing out her next book.

Rhoda Morgenstern gave a wonderful impetus and propulsion to my career.

As long as you’re alive, you can do something.

I think you just take each day and get the best out of it and do what you can and have fun.

I don’t wake up saying, ‘Oh, I’m going to die.’ It’s a waste of time. It really is.

When I wake up in the morning, I don’t say, ‘Oh, I have cancer. I say ‘Another day. How you feeling? Good? Good.’

Women and young girls are constantly judging themselves by standards that aren’t real.

Don’t waste the time you do have.

I’ve had a lot of great stuff – spectacular stuff – happen to me. I’ve got to not be a pig about life.

I’ve always done character roles and tons of movies as the so-called star, but I always felt I was one of the team.

We’re all terminal; none of us are getting out of this alive.

Death is out there for all of us.

I danced in choruses from about 1959 to 1967, in ‘Take Me Along,’ ‘Wildcat,’ and ‘Subways Are for Sleeping.’

Life does not owe me a shred.

I was a dancer, but I was always a little overweight. I’d say, ‘Hello, I’m Valerie Harper, and I’m overweight.’ I’d say it quickly before they could… I always got called chubby. My nose was too wide; my hair was too kinky.

My husband is the best caregiver in the world.

I really look at my life as blessed.

I think drama and comedy are pretty much all the same, and the issue is whether or not you have a sense of humor.

Really appreciate the sunset as you’re driving home, cursing all the terrible drivers on the road. Be where you are when you’re there rather than out there in the future or back there in the past.

The body is just a rooming house.

On ‘Rhoda,’ they wanted my husband, Joe, to wear a pajama top when we were doing love scenes. They finally let him take it off as long as the audience saw him get into bed wearing pajama bottoms so they didn’t think he was completely naked underneath.

As physics has proven, we’re ultimately particulate matter, which means we are all one. That’s why racial and gender bias is so ridiculous.

It can be frightening. I think, ‘I don’t want to go.’ But I give myself room to grieve.

Above all, learn to live when you’re dying.

At an ERA fundraiser years ago, one of my favorite buttons was the one that said, ‘Every mother is a working mother.’

I’m not dying until I do.

Pearl Buck was my mother’s favorite author.

I have cancer. It’s in my brain… What are you gonna do about it?

Don’t live in fear of dying.

Anything I can give women to help them feel better about themselves, that’s what I want to do.

We have a lot of fear around death, and I thought maybe I can help somebody… I want people to be less scared.

Sometimes I yell at my cancer cells, sometimes I make myself laugh.

I’m happier because I had to face what all of us try not to face: that we’re going to die. It’s a fact.

What we really wanted to call it was ‘I Rhoda Book.’

Don’t accept or be crippled by the media hype that aging is bad or shameful.

I have had acupuncture regularly, and I engage in visualization, which is actually an actor’s tool, visualizing myself kicking out the cancer, making up scenarios.

We don’t know what’s around the corner.

I have had a magnificent run.

I had always wanted a steady job in this business, a show that lasted.

The movie that really ‘did it for me’ was ‘All About Eve.’ The backstage feeling, the authenticity, the passion those people had for their lives in the theater. I must say, the movie ‘All About Eve,’ what a great movie! ‘All About Eve’ had a profound effect on my life.

Don’t go to the funeral until the day of the funeral. Live this day.

I’ve had a good run; what more can I ask for?

Though I’m 75, I’m not looking forward to death, but it’s there for all of us.