Top 74 Quotes & Sayings by June Diane Raphael

One Christmas I had no money, and so I went home and just, like, wrote a poem; I mean, I didn't write them, but I just handed out poems as Christmas presents. Like, 'Here's a Pablo Neruda poem that really made me think of you.'

Comedy fans are the best fans. They embrace and support you doing low-budget work and will follow you to the end of the earth!

I remember in second grade, everybody in the class had to come up with adjectives for each other, and I got shy. In a way, I force myself to perform, because if I didn't, I'd stay home rolled up in a ball watching 'The Real Housewives of Orange County' all day.

I took a couple of classes in clowning, but that was more like Lucille Ball kind of slapstick, not Ringling Brothers. But we had to do things silently, and the teacher would do this running commentary. 'Does this make Clown sad? Oh, Clown doesn't like that, does Clown?' Always 'Clown.' Never a name.

I love 'Les Mis' so much, like, since I was younger; I saw it when I was like, you know, 10, and I've seen it almost 18 times.

My go to karaoke song is 'Stars' from 'Les Mis', which is Javert's song. And it's super strange, and every time it comes on people are really weirded out, but that's what I do.

I got so into moisturizing, my skin started overproducing oil. That's my story. There's a lot to talk about, for sure.

I remember my dad watched a lot of TV that we watched, too. I remember watching Saved By The Bell because me and my sister watched it, and my dad kind of watched it with us, too, while he was cooking or whatever he was doing in the kitchen.

Of course, when you're a parent, you can never really be sick.

There's a book called The Women's Room by Marilyn French that was a really big part of my personal feminist awakening growing up that I read.

I remember watching that show [Golden Girls] with my parents and not totally understanding it. Like, a lot of comedy flew over my head, a lot of the sexual stuff I didn't know. But because there was a laugh track, I'd laugh really hard, and I'm now remembering the look on my parents' faces - I had no idea why it was funny. I was sort of, like, laughing along.

[The Women's Room by Marilyn French] was in my house somewhere, blew my mind, I was changed forever. And then I continued to read it at various points in my life, and it sort of opens up in a different way.

I really do. I don't see it as a kind of elite experience - it's our biggest organ. We need to see a dermatologist and have them really look at our skin and figure out what's going on.

Unfortunately, this past birthday, my son was up the entire night before, very sick with that horrible - I think it was called the Norovirus or whatever the hell that was that was going around. So I got it. And then my husband [Paul Scheer] got it. We were both fighting it because he had planned this whole day for me, and we were both pretending it wasn't happening. We were literally driving ourselves to a massage and facial that he had planned and at one point, I was like, "I can't drive anymore. I need to get in the passenger's seat."

It certainly wasn't taught in school beyond the idea of "girls can do anything that boys can do" - I understood that kind of pop culture feminism. I did not understand anything else about feminism.

The sexual revolution... it was the first time I had read anything that came close to describing those feelings of being outside of my body, feeling the shame, all of it, that I really was able to connect to in that book. So it sort of blew my mind. I was also listening to Tori Amos at the same time, so I was like, "Wait, what's happening?!" It was all a part of that, probably when I was, like, 13.

There were a lot of different things [in The Women's Room ]. I don't really want to summarize it in this way. It's about a woman's awakening, a woman who came of age in the '50s and is a teenager - actually, she's a little bit older - in the '60s and part of the women's movement and how she ends up there.

I think I know who my audience is. It's pretty satisfying, and I think we all need to take care of ourselves and laugh as well as do everything we can to fight back right now while being mindful of laughing and enjoying ourselves where and when we can.

I like the way [Marcus Lemonis] thinks. He's made me think about things in a different way. He's made me want to support small businesses in a very real way, seeing what these small-business owners go through and the struggle it is and the courage it takes to put your heart and money behind things at a 24-hour job. I think I relate to that as an actress and a writer and someone who works freelance, in many ways. It never ends, you never clock out. You've always got to keep things moving.

It's very hard, I think especially for women, to not take it in and to not be super conscious of the way that you're being seen, which is of course completely antithetical to the work you want to do, which is completely free and bold and truthful and honest and brave.

I do a lot of coaching with my friends on how to get out of relationships with their agents, boyfriends, contractors, whatever, because that's easy for me.

I would spend the rest of my life inside The Golden Girls, of course. I feel like my dream is to just be retired and to really let it all out and to not give an F anymore, and so Golden Girls, to me, is that time in life.

I've referred to [Marcus Lemonis] as my celebrity crush. I'm totally describing my celebrity crush, and that was not the question. But I am a fan of his. I really am.

I remember watching 21 Jump Street and thinking I'm attracted to Johnny Depp - "What are these feelings?" I remember all of this, the first time you feel things. I mean, yes, boys in class, whatever, but to specifically go back to those experiences, it's kind of amazing.

I'll keep this as nonpartisan and diplomatic as possible - but for those of us whose heads are kind of spinning off and are really engaged in what's happening right now and trying to effect change where we can, when we can, I think we also need to express ourselves and express our anger and also find joy in things like The Golden Girls right now.

A lot of men, they don't put anything on their faces. And some women also overdo it.

I was early in my career and didn't understand that people were looking at me and critiquing me yet.

I'm not a dermatologist, but I had someone explain it to me, and I've seen the effect on my own skin over the years. So I feel like we need to protect our faces, especially those of us who live in Southern California, from this goddamn sun that's on us all day.

I think, is a cultural thing, too. You know, everyone wants to see the baby. Everybody's bringing gifts for the baby.

That's my big fear, and not enjoying things as much as I could and realizing actually how awesome life is right now.

I'm not necessarily [into] pricey products, and I'm not recommending super-fancy stuff. It's more the consistency and the sunblock of it all, engaging in that process - I can be a little snobby about it.

Your best friendships are with people who share your world view.

You don't have to spend eight years of your life trying to get something done. You can get your answers very quickly, and there's something satisfying about that.

I'm on Grace And Frankie, which is also about that time in life, I'm realizing. But I would - so I guess I am sort of in that show. But there's something about The Golden Girls and the sort of multicam set and Bea Arthur that I just want to be around those ladies all day long, and I want to be on those comfy couches and want to sit in that kitchen in those chairs in those pastels, and I want to wear Blanche's outfits and it's just really... and I want to sit outside in that weird little courtyard.

Years later we were watching 90210 [with my sister].

I'm not referring to an up-and-coming comedian. I am referring to the host of The Profit. He invests his own money into small businesses that need to be turned around. He becomes partners in them. And I love the way he does business, and I love his integrity, and I love where his head's at, and I love what he has to say, and I learn from him.

[The Women's Room] is very much a white woman's piece of fiction, for sure. But for me, as a white woman, I related to a lot of it and continue to as I've gotten older, and especially at this moment in time, I want to read it again.

I love The Golden Girls. I've watched recently, and it's sort of insane there's a chef that they're always referring to as "fancy" - the pilot's kind of a mess.

[I think] everybody should see a dermatologist.

[The Women's Room] was the first thing I read that explained a lot of the feelings I was having and a lot of the rage and the feeling uncomfortable in my body and knowing that I was feeling a certain way in the world, but I didn't have the language for it.

I feel like there's so much focus on the woman when you're pregnant, and it's amazing and beautiful and everybody's taking care of you, and then you have the baby and nobody's interested. And yet you are the most vulnerable you've been - I mean, I'm speaking on my own experience. Other women may have very different experiences.

Anyone who knows my professional history has known I've gone through a gazillion managers and agents or whatever. I'm like, "This doesn't feel right - moving on." I don't really suffer fools, which makes it easier for me.

I'm more focused or try to be more focused on my acting and writing and comedy and let the other stuff fall where it may.

I'm certainly much happier when I feel that the work is good.

It's a very hard line to walk, and I certainly am nowhere near having cracked how to do that, but I try to focus on being a brave performer and not worrying about my lighting or whatever, even though, then, sometimes I see myself on screen, and I'm like, "Why did you wear that, look like that, whatever," but I'm also more accepting that is what it is. There's this battle always.

[Paul Scheer] was kind of pretending to not be as sick as he was. And then we almost pulled into this spa when I finally called it and said, "I'm very ill. We need to go home." And he said, "I am, too." He said that he wasn't going to do his treatments, he was going to - by the way, these are great problems to have - he was going to lie in the men's relaxation room in between throwing up. I was like, "This is insane. We're sick, and we need to just acknowledge it. And it sucks that it happened on my birthday, but let's get back into bed."

I read [The Women's Room] in my 20s, and I was like, "I understand this now." And now I've become a mom and read it again and truly understand on a different level what one of the main characters goes through as a mother.

I'm afraid of death, obviously.

One thing that I would like to do that I've seen them not do that well is take women all through the process of the postpartum period in a more meaningful way. That would be my agenda.

I do use the F word a lot, unfortunately.

I feel I've learned a lot about [experience of giving birth], and I think it's amazing. Men and women who are ob-gyns are pretty amazing.

That's one of my greatest strengths. I'm a Scorpio rising - we're very decisive. I'm very good at cutting things off that don't feel right.

Another thing I also recommend is washing your face with white towels, little white towels instead of your hands. Other towels have dye in them and, with water on them, I just don't mess around with that. This way you're not getting your hands back on your dirty face as you're washing it. You're going to see what's coming off.

[The Women's Room] is one of those pieces of fiction that reveals itself in a different way every time. It's incredible.

I know that it feels dangerous and scary and working without a net, so to speak. And working without a net, for me - maybe other women do it a totally different way - means being vanity-free. That's how, as an artist, I know that I need to work.

I think my real fear is that I will get to old age and think I spent too much time concerned about the way that I look and other bullshit. That's really a fear of mine.

I think the worst professional advice I've received... I feel I've been lucky in that I've gotten a lot of wonderful guidance, but I remember - and I would never do this to someone - I remember going into a manager's office, the manager I had in New York, and this was way back when. And she said to me, immediately, "You should never wear striped T-shirts. You look much bigger than you are."

I think I certainly know that the space I want to work in is a fearless space.

There was that moment of, "Oh, my parents are watching Columbo and I hate it" to "No, I love this show, too." And I feel like, for me, that was around 11 or 12, where I could actually join my parents in their viewing and wasn't so irritated that they were always watching Columbo.

If someone tells me, "I just wash my face with soap," we have that discussion. And a lot of men, too. Thank god Paul Scheer knows to moisturize.