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Oprah Winfrey
Entertainment Executive
Oprah Winfrey: Well, the most powerful scene in The Color Purple for me was the scene where Sofia walks through the cornfield, and proclaims herself to Celia, defines and proclaims herself. Where she says, "All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my cousins. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my uncles. But I ain't never thought I had to fight in my own house." I did that scene in one take because it was the essence, I thought, of my life, and very liberating to live it through Sofia. Because, at the time that I spoke it, I wasn't there yet. Because, what she is saying is "I fought people all my life, and I'm not going to fight in my own house anymore, in my own space anymore. I'm going to have what I deserve." And it's taken me a while to get to where Sofia was. But it was so liberating. It was all, I think, a part of the process of growth for me, to recognize it can be done.
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Oprah Winfrey
Entertainment Executive
Oprah Winfrey: I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity. The reason I feel so strongly about that, and it's not just a saying for me. I was hired in television in 1973, right after the riots of '71, '72, and other blacks and female people were hired at the same time. People accused me of being a token at the time. It didn't really bother me because I realized that I was going to stay there. Once I got there, I realized, nobody is getting me out of here. This is not just a phase for me. I sort of began to create my own luck. I said I knew how to edit when I didn't. I said I knew how to report on stories. I went to my first city council meeting, I wasn't quite sure of what to do, but I had told the news director that I did. So, then what you have to do is, be willing to admit that you know nothing. So I walked into the city council meeting and announced to everybody there, "This is my first day on the job, and I don't know anything. Please help me because I have told the news director at Channel 5 that I know what I'm doing. Pleeeeze help me." And they did. And from that point on all those councilmen became my friends, and I'd come in the council meeting, and they helped me out. And I realize now it was because of my willingness to say, "I don't know it, but if you will just, you know, help me." So that's how I learned.
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Bob Woodward
Investigative Reporter
Bob Woodward: I don't know whether I feel pride. I think pride is hubris. I think it is an emotion that if you bask in it, it's like hate; it will destroy you. So I don't make those kinds of assessments. I like what I do. I am repeatedly struck by how I have missed part of the story, always. One of the managing editors at the Post, Howard Simons, during Watergate -- this was not on a Watergate story, but I was struggling with a story early in my time at the Post -- and he came by, and he said, "You don't have to understand a man in an afternoon." In other words, you don't have to do it in a day, and you won't achieve understanding of a in an -- slow down, take your time, dig, go back. And no one goes back or slows down or digs enough, particularly me.
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Bob Woodward
Investigative Reporter
I think journalism is a practice, like law, that you keep learning. You are trying to get it right and you never do, and that there must be a sense whenever you get to something and then realize two weeks earlier, two days or two minutes earlier, you didn't know that, and it's critical that no matter what you do, you are never going to have the full story. So you are dealing a glancing blow to what's out there. You want to deal a careful glancing blow. You want to spend time on it. You want to make sense out of it. You want it to be fair. But in the end, it's only a glancing blow.
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Shinya Yamanaka
Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Shinya Yamanaka: I was an orthopedic surgeon, and my first failure was that I was not good at doing surgery, and that failure gave me an opportunity to move to basic science. Then my first major was pharmacology, and in pharmacology we only use many inhibitors and stimulators, all just drugs. And any drug cannot be 100 percent specific and 100 percent effective. So although I did many, many experiments, I did not obtain the answer, because the drugs I used weren't specific enough. So that was kind of my second failure in my career. But that second failure got me interested in knockout mice, mouse technology. So I think failure is important in my career.
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Shinya Yamanaka
Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Shinya Yamanaka: Usually to find a job in the States -- from Japan -- usually you have to ask your professor in Japan to recommend some place. But unfortunately, at that time, my professor -- my mentor in Japan -- did not know any labs working on knockout mice. So I did not get any good recommendations. So I had to apply for many positions, which I learned from scientific journals such as Nature and Science. I applied to -- I forget -- like 20 or 30 different universities and laboratories in the States. And UCSF -- University of California at San Francisco -- was the first to give me an opportunity. That was why I ended up coming to San Francisco.
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Shinya Yamanaka
Embryonic Stem Cell Research
Shinya Yamanaka: I really had hard times, so I was about to quit doing science. I was about to go back to clinics, but again, I was lucky to find another position, in Nara. Nara is very close to Osaka. It's only one hour by car. There's another university in Nara, and I was lucky enough to find a position as an associate professor over there. The funding was much better, and the scientific atmosphere was much better over there. That means there are many, many good scientists in that university in Nara. So without that promotion, probably I [would have] quit my scientific career.
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