Quotes from Valerie Harper

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Magazines airbrush everything. If you think it's an illusion, then it probably is.

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

When I heard 'incurable'... incurable is a tough word.

I don't have a reputation of being a super-witch who demands pink rugs in the dressing room.

Live fully in the instant.

I have an intention to live each moment fully.

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

My stepmother Angela is an Italian from New York City. I based Rhoda on her and a Jewish friend named Penny Ann Green. People often said that Rhoda seemed to be Italian. That was the Angela seeping through.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

It's really important that we don't hang up the membership to the human community at menopause.

I'm trying to live every moment as much as I can.

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.

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.

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

I first met Rhoda Morgenstern in the spring of 1970.