Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave.
Mary Tyler Moore
You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.
Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you're really strangers.
There are certain things about me that I will never tell to anyone because I am a very private person. But basically, what you see is who I am. I'm independent, I do like to be liked, I do look for the good side of life and people. I'm positive, I'm disciplined, I like my life in order, and I'm neat as a pin.
My peripheral vision has been severely limited because of my diabetes, which means I can see just fine looking straight ahead. But if I am at a function with lots of people, I am constantly bumping into people - even kicking them!
I need insulin to stay alive. It's just therapy to keep going. What I can do is make sure that I keep my blood sugar down to a reasonable level. I can exercise, and I can eat properly. And insulin plays a very big part in that.
I've always been independent. I've always had courage. But I didn't always own my diabetes.
You truly have to make the very best of what you've got. We all do.
When the doctor said I had diabetes, I conjured images of languishing on a chaise longue nibbling chocolates. I have no idea why I thought this.
Because of the enormous responsibility, diabetic kids tend to grow up to be the most mature, most realistic people who have a natural desire to reach outside of themselves.
I live in a kind of controlled awareness. I wouldn't call it fear, but it's an awareness. I know I have a responsibility to behave in a certain way. I'm able to do that.
A human being has been given an intellect to make choices, and we know there are other food sources that do not require the killing of a creature that would protest being killed.
I've had problems with my eyes, and my legs hurt if I walk a great deal. That's due to very bad circulation. It's called claudication, and it's painful. So I have to stop if I'm walking, and pretending I'm looking in the window, so that I can rest them a little bit and then start off again.
Diets are for those who are thick and tired of it.
The only leading man I ever had a crush on was James Garner.
I do watch a lot of Fox News. I like Charles Krauthammer and Bill O'Reilly.
Diabetes is an all-too-personal time bomb which can go off today, tomorrow, next year, or 10 years from now - a time bomb affecting millions like me and the children here today.
I know the food groups that I like to have and are good for me and those that I have to stay away from. And so, I don't need to know exactly what I'm going to eat, but I take my insulin probably 20 minutes before I'm going to sit down.
Lou Grant was pretty much always Lou Grant.
I loved working with Valerie. That was the most wonderful revelation to find that when we are on a set and we're playing our roles, we're like separated twins. We can almost finish each other's dialogue.
I'm not an actress who can create a character. I play me.
And then Dick called and said, I'm going to do a special called Dick Van Dyke and the other woman, that would be you, because every time I try to check into a hotel with my wife, they look at me as though I'm cheating on Laura.
No candy bars unless I've had a low blood sugar where I'm shaky.
I think I can take responsibility for that in that I was the audience. I was the voice of sanity around whom all these crazies did their dance. And I reacted in the same way that a member of the audience would have reacted.
I can't eat pure sugar. I can't have candy.
And I came close to losing a part of my foot on two occasions. I hope I'm consistently lucky and that the next time I develop a blister or step on something sharp, that I don't go as far as I did on those two times.
And that's what the audience was feeling too, as they watched the show and as they watch it now. And overriding all of that is the way it was written. It was written honestly. There was never any manufactured laugh. There was never compromising of character.
And the sculptor woman was so clever in the way she did it. She had the beret just about to leave my hand. So it's attached to this finger and that's what will keep it there. And I'm looking up at it, so there's no question but that that beret is going to fly.
But I'm very happy with my life the way it has been turning out. A little time in the country, a little time with the animals and working on behalf of them.
I don't know how to do the other, so I won't even consider television until the audience's taste changes.
I just like the continue doing what I've been doing. A melange of funny, straight drama, television, movies, a little theater here and there wouldn't hurt. So if I can keep doing that, I'll be a very happy person.
I live in New York simply because I don't know any better. I moved there when the show went off the air a couple of years after that.
Interestingly that some of the characters did not turn out the way Jim and Allen had envisioned them.
It was Grant's company and he made all the decisions. And that was just fine.
No, I tell you what I like is having the play close after a decent run and looking back on it and saying, yes, I did that, and wasn't it wonderful? Because while you're doing it, it is really tough. It is so hard.
Reruns are wonderful because it usually indicates that they had something going for them to begin with and that's why you're still looking at them. And in both my shows, The Dick Van Dyke Show and the last one, they were so well written and so good they hold up.
The kinds of shows that seem to work now, the comedy shows, are those which require very little attention. They're superficial and I like articulate comedy.
There are two kinds of cloning right now. One is therapeutic cloning which is for coming up with cures for life threatening, really, really awful diseases. Then there is reproductive cloning, which is to make a human being out of your DNA and a donor egg.
Well, Rhoda was, I think, the last actress that we saw. There had been so many wonderful actresses who were close, really close. But there was no magical epiphany.
Well, there are certain foods that I prefer not to eat because they're just such a jolt to the system.
What happens is that the system builds many inferior blood vessels in the eye to take the place of the vessels that are dying. And those blood vessels are not up to the task. And they bleed. They hemorrhage and they cover the eye inside with blood.
I've had the fame and the joy of getting laughter - those are gifts.
I still feel as if I weren't a good enough mother. I didn't break any rules.
