Top 280 Joan Rivers Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I wish I could tell you it gets better. It doesn’t get better. YOU get better.”

— Joan Rivers

2. “Life goes by fast. Enjoy it. Calm down. It’s all funny.”

— Joan Rivers

3. “If you can’t make fun of yourself, you don’t have any right to make fun of others.”

— Joan Rivers

Featured in: Fun Quotes

4. “Any form of complacency is the kiss of death for any professional.”

— Joan Rivers

5. “The first rule of survival is: Make your own rules. The hell anyone thinks about the way you’re acting; listen only to yourself.”

— Joan Rivers

6. “I enjoy life when things are happening. I don’t care if it’s good things or bad things. That means you’re alive.”

— Joan Rivers

7. “Life is a movie, and you’re the star. Give it a happy ending.”

— Joan Rivers

8. “Money can’t buy you happiness but it can pay for the plastic surgery.”

— Joan Rivers

9. “My body is a temple, and my temple needs redecorating.”

— Joan Rivers

10. “Don’t worry about the money. Love the process.”

— Joan Rivers

11. “In life the only thing that you can expect is the unexpected; the only surprise is a day that has none.”

— Joan Rivers

12. “When you can laugh at yourself no one can ever make a fool of you.”

— Joan Rivers

13. “Girls just want to have fun. Well, so do old ladies!”

— Joan Rivers

Featured in: Fun Quotes

14. “She’s so fat, she’s my two best friends.”

— Joan Rivers

15. “People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.”

— Joan Rivers

16. “Looking 50 is great, if you’re 60.”

— Joan Rivers

17. “If God wanted us to bend over he’d put diamonds on the floor.”

— Joan Rivers

18. “You know you’ve reached middle age when you’re cautioned to slow down by your doctor, instead of by the police.”

— Joan Rivers

19. “If you laugh at it, you can deal with it.”

— Joan Rivers

20. “When a man has a birthday, he takes a day off. When a woman has a birthday, she takes at least three years off.”

— Joan Rivers

21. “Nothing is yours permanently so you better enjoy it while it’s happening.”

— Joan Rivers

22. “I’m in nobody’s circle, I’ve always been an outsider.”

— Joan Rivers

23. “My husband wanted to be cremated. I told him I’d scatter his ashes at Neiman Marcus – that way, I’d visit him every day.”

— Joan Rivers

24. “Don’t cook. Don’t clean. No man will ever make love to a woman because she waxed the linoleum.”

— Joan Rivers

25. “Life is very tough. If you don’t laugh, it’s tough.”

— Joan Rivers

26. “A Mafia guy in Vegas gave me this advice: ‘Run your own race, put on your blinders.’”

— Joan Rivers

27. “One of the most rebellious things a woman can do is allow people to think she’s mean.”

— Joan Rivers

28. “I was smart enough to go through any door that opened.”

— Joan Rivers

29. “To the pessimist the light at the end of the tunnel is another train.”

— Joan Rivers

30. “Don’t follow any advice, no matter how good, until you feel as deeply in your spirit as you think in your mind that the counsel is wise.”

— Joan Rivers

31. “You know you’re getting old when work is a lot less fun and fun is a lot more work.”

— Joan Rivers

Featured in: Fun Quotes

32. “Comedy is truth. We should not apologize for it.”

— Joan Rivers

33. “A German sense of humor is an oxymoron.”

— Joan Rivers

34. “I have to tell you that it’s not going to be easy. Take every chance and every opportunity that you can. Don’t say ‘I can’t’ or ‘I shouldn’t’ or ‘I’m too tired.’”

— Joan Rivers

35. “I hate reality shows that are not reality.”

— Joan Rivers

36. “Forty for you, sixty for me. And equal partners we will be.”

— Joan Rivers

37. “Welcome to my world! I’ve been through it all, and I often pinch myself to believe my luck. I design jewlery, create cosmetics, perform comedy, act, lecture, write books, travel, have a fabulous daughter, and a phenomenal grandson-and I feel I’m the luckiest woman on the planet.”

— Joan Rivers

Featured in: Book Quotes

38. “Women should look good. Work on yourselves. Education? I spit on education. No man is ever going to put his hand up your dress looking for a library card.”

— Joan Rivers

39. “Elizabeth Taylor’s so fat she puts mayonnaise on aspirin.”

— Joan Rivers

40. “Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I believe when a woman enters a room, men should stand up – and gay men should stand up at least halfway.”

— Joan Rivers

41. “My sex life is so bad, my G-spot has been declared a historical landmark.”

— Joan Rivers

42. “I have a wonderful psychiatrist that I see maybe once a year, because I don’t need it. It all comes out onstage.”

— Joan Rivers

43. “Anger is a symptom, a way of cloaking and expressing feelings too awful to experience directly – hurt, bitterness, grief and, most of all, fear.”

— Joan Rivers

44. “Just remember: Surviving is the best revenge, no matter what the disaster has been.”

— Joan Rivers

45. “Last night I asked my husband, ‘What’s your favorite sexual position?’ and he said, ‘Next door.’”

— Joan Rivers

46. “I told my mother-in-law that my house was her house, and she said, ‘Get the hell off my property.’”

— Joan Rivers

47. “Elizabeth Taylor has more chins than the Chinese telephone directory.”

— Joan Rivers

48. “Some women take up the law and become lawyers. Other women lay down the law and become wives.”

— Joan Rivers

49. “I have no methods; all I do is accept people as they are.”

— Joan Rivers

50. “I hate Arizona. It always eight hundred degrees outside and everybody’s always saying, “But it’s a dry heat!” So’s the inside of my microwave.”

— Joan Rivers