Top 117 Quotes & Sayings by Valerie Harper

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actress Valerie Harper.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Valerie Kathryn Harper was an American actress. She began her career as a dancer on Broadway, making her debut in the musical Take Me Along in 1959. She is best remembered for her role as Rhoda Morgenstern on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977) and its spin-off Rhoda (1974–1978). For her work on Mary Tyler Moore, she thrice received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, and later received the award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Rhoda. From 1986 to 1987, she appeared as Valerie Hogan on the sitcom Valerie. Her film appearances include roles in Freebie and the Bean (1974) and Chapter Two (1979), both of which garnered her Golden Globe Award nominations. She returned to stage work in her later career, appearing in several Broadway productions. In 2010, she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance as Tallulah Bankhead in the play Looped.

American - Actress | August 22, 1940 - August 30, 2019

Source: Wikipedia

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

Valerie Harper

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.

Valerie Harper

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

Valerie Harper

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

Valerie Harper

Comedy is saving me.

Valerie Harper

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.

Valerie Harper

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

Valerie Harper

I really want Americans, and all of us, to be less afraid of death, and know that it's a passage, but that - don't go to the funeral before the day of the funeral.

Valerie Harper

Mine's called leptomeningeal carcinomatosis. It's incurable. It's terminal. And it's in a tiny space - a huge area all around the brain and up and down the spine. But it's small area where the spinal fluid is. It's microscopic. You can't see it. It isn't lumps that they can say, 'Oh we can zap that.'

Valerie Harper

Live fully in the instant.

Valerie Harper

I'm talking about enjoying and finding pleasure and interest and happiness and curiosity every moment.

Valerie Harper

I'm painfully middle class.

Valerie Harper

If I wake up in the night terrified, I try to find a way to not let the fear have me. Every moment you spend in fear of cancer is a moment you've wasted enjoying life. Replace that fear - get in the moment and enjoy it.

Valerie Harper

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.

Valerie Harper

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.

Valerie Harper

I'm not dying until I do.

Valerie Harper

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.

Valerie Harper

I have an intention to live each moment fully.

Valerie Harper

I felt sharing my experience may be of value or assistance in some way to others.

Valerie Harper

Life does not owe me a shred.

Valerie Harper

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

Valerie Harper

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

Valerie Harper

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.

Valerie Harper

I'm a perfect person to tell people not to give up.

Valerie Harper

Do not tell somebody how to vote, just go up to them and tell them what Fahrenheit 9/11 meant to you. Fahrenheit will probably not win an Academy Award, but if you put it first on your list, it will become a nominee.

Valerie Harper

Whatever happens, who cares.

Valerie Harper

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.

Valerie Harper

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

Valerie Harper

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

Valerie Harper

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.

Valerie Harper

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

Valerie Harper

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

Valerie Harper

If you die, you're not a failure.

Valerie Harper

I never did stand-up. If I've been funny ever, it was with other actors.

Valerie Harper

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.

Valerie Harper

Don't waste the time you do have.

Valerie Harper

You have to look life in the face, doing what you can where you can.

Valerie Harper

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

Valerie Harper

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

Valerie Harper

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

Valerie Harper

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.'

Valerie Harper

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

Valerie Harper

Miracles occur, or people die the next day.

Valerie Harper

I first met Rhoda Morgenstern in the spring of 1970.

Valerie Harper

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.

Valerie Harper

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

Valerie Harper

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

Valerie Harper

Luck is not an acceptable substitute for early detection.

Valerie Harper