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Ted Turner
Founder, Cable News Network
We didn't have hardly any commercials -- regular commercials like Procter & Gamble or Budweiser or Coca Cola. They didn't buy us because we weren't -- for the most part, they wouldn't buy us because we didn't have ratings and we were too small. But we were able to sell records and tapes and Crazy Glue and things like that. People would mail -- usually they would mail a check for $19.95 in, plus shipping and handling. What I would do is to see where they came from, and I would separate the letters. The letters from Atlanta would go here, and the letters from outside of Atlanta would go over here, and if I got 100 letters in Atlanta and I got 200 outside of Atlanta, I figured the audience was twice as big outside of Atlanta as it was inside of Atlanta. While I was going through these letters -- I swear to God, this is the truth -- it turns out that about one out of ten letters -- the Post Office department was real sloppy, and they wouldn't stamp them. You know? It was a used postage stamp. So I would tear those postage stamps off, and we'd use them again on our outgoing mail to save money. The Chairman of the Board was up there pulling the stamps off the letters. That's a funny story, isn't it?
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Ted Turner
Founder, Cable News Network
If something happens to you that breaks your heart, that's not going to do you or anybody any good. What you've got to do is shake it off, and just like if you're playing for a baseball team. You get beat on Friday? Well, you know you got Saturday and Sunday, and if you get beat on Saturday and Sunday, well, there's Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. And if you get beat all year like the Braves -- the first four years I owned them, they came in last every time in their division, and set a record that stands today with the most consecutive last place finishes since divisional play was started. But I didn't quit. And 18 years later, I won the World Series, and we had the best team in the history of sports. For 13 consecutive years, we won our division.
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Ted Turner
Founder, Cable News Network
Ted Turner: It was hard to lose my sister and then, a couple years later, my father too. If I had spent my time just sitting down and thinking about it, it would have absolutely crushed me. I did give it some thought, obviously, but in both cases, whenever I had tragedy occur in my life, I'd just go work harder. I think that's the best way to heal from wounds -- spiritual wounds, wounds of the heart. The best thing to do is to get your mind off of it as quickly as you can, and the best way to do that is do something that requires your thought process and your efforts, so that you can do something else and concentrate on it and grow, grow out of the tragedy.
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Desmond Tutu
Nobel Prize for Peace
One moment, Nelson Mandela is in jail, and the next moment, he is walking, a free man. One moment, we are shackled as the oppressed of apartheid; the next, we are voting for the very first time. I was 63 when I voted for the first time in my life in the country of my birth. Nelson Mandela was 76 years of age. But, it happened, it happened. It happened partly because the international community supported us. People prayed for us. People demonstrated on our behalf, especially young people. Students at universities and college campuses used to sit out in the baking sunshine to force their institutions to divest and the miracle happened. We became free because we were helped and we want to say a big, "Thank you," to the world. And, you can become free nonviolently.
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Desmond Tutu
Nobel Prize for Peace
Archbishop Desmond Tutu: I had seen him only once before, before he got arrested, in the 1950's when he adjudicated at a debating contest, and I was part of that. I never saw him really again, although now our houses in Soweto are not so very far apart. In 1990, I think it's the 11th of February, he came out and came to spend his first night in the house which was the official residence of the Archbishop of Cape Town, and I was the Archbishop of Cape Town! And he spent his first night there. Incredible. We hardly saw him. He was ensconced with the leadership of his party, the African National Congress, and now and again, they would be interrupted. There is a phone call. This is the White House, and there is a phone call. This is the Statehouse in Lusaka. I mean, he was getting telephone calls congratulating him and wishing him well, and he then had his first -- on the Monday, he had his first press conference as a free man on the lawns of Bishop's Court. Sort of, that was the extent of our meeting. I mean, I met him in the morning just to say, 'hi,' but what I do remember is he went around thanking the people, my staff, for, you know, people who had cooked their meals. He's always been gracious in that kind of way, but this is sort of the first time I saw his charm working on people.
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John Updike
Two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction
Stuttering is kind of -- I suppose it shows basic fright. Like in the comic strips, when people begin to stutter it's because they're afraid. And also, a feeling that -- my father thought that I had too many words to get out all at once. So, I didn't speak very pleasingly, but I never stopped speaking or trying to communicate this way, and I think the stuttering has gotten better over the years. I have found having a microphone is a great help, because you don't have to force your voice out of your throat, just a little noise will work. But, it was real enough, and one of the things -- you know, you write because you don't talk very well, and maybe one of the reasons that I was determined to write was that I wasn't an orator, unlike my mother and my grandfather, who both spoke beautifully and spoke all the time. Maybe I grew up with too many voices around me, as a matter of fact.
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John Updike
Two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction
John Updike: Since I've gone to some trouble not to teach, and not to have any other employment, I have no reason not to go to my desk after breakfast and work there until lunch. So, I work three or four hours in the morning, and it's not all covering blank paper with beautiful phrases. You begin by answering a letter or two. There's a lot of junk in your life as a writer and most people have junk in their lives. But, I try to give about three hours to the project at hand and to move it along. There's a danger if you don't move it along steadily that you're going to forget what it's about, so you must keep in touch with it I figure. So once embarked, yes, I do try to stick to a schedule. I've been maintaining this schedule off and on -- well, really since I moved up to Ipswich in '57. It's a long time to be doing one thing. I don't know how to retire. I don't know how to get off the horse, though. I still like to do it. I still love books coming out. I love the smell of glue and the shiny look of the jacket and the type, and to see your own scribbles turned into more or less impeccable type. It's still a great thrill for me, so I will probably persevere a little longer, but I do think maybe the time has come for me to be a little less compulsive, and maybe abandon the book-a-year technique which has been basically the way I've operated.
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John Updike
Two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction
This present novel that will be out -- Villages -- I several times thought it might be a bad idea and kind of abandoned it. So, it was really the habit -- the habit of writing that kept me at it in the end. It was like a bad marriage. I mean, whatever. This is the wife I'm married to here, and I'm going to finish this book. Finishing it becomes the only way to get rid of it. So yes, it's good to have a certain doggedness to your technique. In college I was struck by the fact that Bernard Shaw, who became a playwright only after writing five novels, would sit in the British Museum, the reading room, and his quota was something like maybe five pages a day, but when he got to the last word on the last page, -- whether it was the middle of a sentence -- he would stop. So this notion that when you have a quota, whether it's two pages or -- three is how I think of it, three pages -- that it's a fairly modest quota, but nevertheless if you do it, really do it, the stuff will accumulate.
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