Top 35 Gilda Radner Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.”

— Gilda Radner

Featured in: Experience Quotes, Meaning Quotes, Journey Quotes, Adaptability Quotes, Healing Quotes

2. “It’s always something.”

— Gilda Radner

3. “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end.”

— Gilda Radner

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

4. “The goal is to live a full, productive life even with all that ambiguity. No matter what happens, whether the cancer never flares up again or whether you die, the important thing is that the days that you have had you will have lived.”

— Gilda Radner

5. “Humor is just truth, only faster!”

— Gilda Radner

6. “I base most of my fashion taste on what doesn’t itch.”

— Gilda Radner

7. “I’d much rather be a woman than a man. Women can cry, they can wear cute clothes, and they’re the first to be rescued off sinking ships.”

— Gilda Radner

8. “I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me they are the role model for being alive.”

— Gilda Radner

9. “There is no real security except for whatever you build inside yourself.”

— Gilda Radner

10. “Having cancer gave me membership in an elite club I’d rather not belong to.”

— Gilda Radner

11. “Dreams are like paper, they tear so easily.”

— Gilda Radner

12. “Adopted kids are such a pain – you have to teach them how to look like you.”

— Gilda Radner

13. “It’s like my father always said to me, he said to me, he said, Roseanna Roseanadana, it’s always something. If it isn’t one thing – it’s another! It’s always something.”

— Gilda Radner

14. “Fame changes a lot of things, but it can’t change a light bulb.”

— Gilda Radner

15. “While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die – whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.”

— Gilda Radner

16. “Cancer is probably the most unfunny thing in the world, but I’m a comedian, and even cancer couldn’t stop me from seeing the humor in what I went through.”

— Gilda Radner

17. “Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end.”

— Gilda Radner

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

18. “I can always be distracted by love, but eventually I get horny for my creativity.”

— Gilda Radner

19. “I would rather be funny than gorgeous, absolutely. Because it’s too hard to be gorgeous, you know. I could make a stab at gorgeous as long as I had something funny to say to get out of it.”

— Gilda Radner

20. “I think clothes should make you feel safe. I like clothes you want to go to sleep in. I sometimes stand in front of a mirror and change a million times because I know I really want to wear my nightgown.”

— Gilda Radner

21. “I grew up in front of a television. I guess I’ll grow old inside of one.”

— Gilda Radner

22. “I’ve learned what I can control is whether I am going to live a day in fear and depression and panic, or whether I am going to attack the day and make it as good a day, as wonderful a day, as I can.”

— Gilda Radner

23. “I love being a woman. You can cry. You get to wear pants now. If you’re on a boat and it’s going to sink, you get to go on the rescue boat first. You get to wear cute clothes. It must be a great thing, or so many men wouldn’t be wanting to do it.”

— Gilda Radner

24. “It’s such an act of optimism to get through a day and enjoy it and laugh and do all that without thinking about death. What spirit human beings have!”

— Gilda Radner

25. “Show business is like riding a bicycle – when you fall off, the best thing to do is get up, brush yourself off and get back on again.”

— Gilda Radner

26. “I have always found men who were funny, irresistible. It’s rare that I ever based love on looks or superficial things, but it a guy made me laugh-and that didn’t mean he had to be in comedy professionally – I was hooked.”

— Gilda Radner

27. “Comedy is very controlling – you are making people laugh.”

— Gilda Radner

28. “I would say that Lucy, ‘I Love Lucy,’ she was my idol.”

— Gilda Radner

29. “Never let a gynecologist put anything in your nose.”

— Gilda Radner

30. “I’m not really an impersonator.”

— Gilda Radner

31. “You feel completely in control when you hear a wave of laughter coming back at you that you have caused.”

— Gilda Radner

32. “Suddenly I began to wonder how to please so many people. do I take the magnesium citrate? What about the coffee enema? Do I do both? Do I do the abdominal message or the colonic? Do I tell the doctors about each other? East meets West in Gilda’s body: Western medicine down my throat, Eastern medicine up my butt.”

— Gilda Radner

33. “Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Like my life, this book has ambiguity. Like my life, this book is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity, as Joanna said.”

— Gilda Radner

34. “There are no guarantees. There are no promises, but there is you, and strength inside to fight for recovery. And always there is hope.”

— Gilda Radner

35. “Gilda’s book ends with her acceptance of what I had called, in working with her, “delicious ambiguity,” the freedom that comes with simply not knowing the outcome of every happening or happenstance.”

— Gilda Radner

36. “What we put into every moment is all we have.”

— Gilda Radner

37. “Don’t look for perfect endings, but allow not knowing to lead you to a deeper appreciation of life, so that you get your joy back on the way to an outcome that remains to be revealed.”

— Gilda Radner