I realize now that I was a feminist and the minute I heard the word I certainly knew it meant me, but at that time I don’t think we had the label yet. But there’s no doubt about it that I was born a feminist.
People really want to do something good. You just have to show them where it is.
So I still seized the power, but I felt that if I officially made myself the boss, in black and white, it would be too intimidating for the other producers and the other men who worked on the show. In other words, I had the power, but I gave them the title.
You can’t be happy, if you’re not free and you’re not fulfilling yourself.
If it’s one thing we learned from the first book, it’s that you don’t have to be a prizefighter, or a world-renowned architect, or a concert violinist to have been affected by the power of words.
Ive always been a champion of kids pursuing their dreams. But sometimes in life, extraordinary circumstances may force us to temporarily put our dreams on hold. The most important thing is to never lose sight of that dream, no matter what punches life may throw in our way.
Be who you are. Otherwise, you end up committing suicide. You end up marrying people when you shouldn’t be marrying them and having terrible, secret lives.
You know, theres endorphins in laughter, as there are endorphins in running in the park.
Marriage is like a vacuum cleaner. You stick it to your ear and it sucks out all your energy and ambition.
It’s so important to raise people to grow up to be who they are and not be forced to be who they’re not. What an awful thing to do to people – it’s like being in prison.
The Golden Girls certainly proved that there was a large audience for a show about older women.
That is the difference between St. Jude’s and all other children’s hospitals. The other hospitals are not bad at all; they’re good hospitals, but they’re just working with what they know, and St. Jude’s is working with what nobody else knows, because they’re doing research.
One of the things women are very good at, that’s networking. Women are not afraid to say, “I need.” They’re not afraid. Men won’t even ask for directions. Women will tell each other when they need something. Women will tell each other when their husband is having an affair. Men don’t do that.
I know George Burns was a very happy man.
A feminist is a man or woman who already knows for a fact that men and women are qual and wants society to wake up to that fact, so the world can stop operating at half-strength.
The rejection that we all take and the sadness and the aggravation and the loss of jobs and all of the things that we live through in our lives, without a sense of humor, I don’t know how people make it.
It’s important to think big, but you’ve got to work small.
Losing my parents was probably the hardest and deepest blow from which I’ve had to recover.
I was an educated girl. I’d done very well in school. I had a good point average and graduated from USC as an English teacher. My dad didn’t even finish high school.
I find that balancing my life with my work with the kids at St. Jude, working on books, working on my career as an actor and taking time out for my husband and family help to cushion a lot of the blows.