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Oprah Winfrey
Entertainment Executive
I was the only Negro in a pageant of all red-haired girls and it's the "Miss Fire Prevention" contest. So the Lord knows, I'm not going to win. So I was very relaxed about it. I thought, "Well, I got a new gown, and this is great." So when it came time for the question and answer period, they asked, "What would you do if you had a million dollars?" And one girl said, "If I had a million dollars, I'd buy my mama a Frigidaire and my dad a truck." Someone else said if they had a million dollars they'd buy their brother Bubba a motorcycle because, "He's always wanted one," or they'd give it to the poor. And I said, all totally relaxed because I'm not going to win anyway, "If I had a million dollars, I would be a spendin' fool. I'm not quite sure what I would spend it on, but I would spend, spend, spend. Spendin' fool." Well, I ended up winning. And there was another question about what I would like to do with my life, my career. Well, everybody wanted to be a nurse, or a teacher, and I made this big speech about broadcast journalism -- mainly because I had seen Barbara Walters that morning on The Today Show. So I thought, "Well, what can I be? I can't be a nurse, can't be a teacher because that's what they were." So I said I wanted to be a broadcast journalist because I believed in the truth. I was interested in proclaiming the truth to the world and all. And I won the contest. Well what a shocked Negro, me.
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Oprah Winfrey
Entertainment Executive
I was working in Nashville, and so I moved to Baltimore, and I thought "Well, I'll do this for a while, and then I don't know what I'll do." So when I was called in and put on the edge of being fired and certainly demoted and knew that firing was only a couple weeks away. I was devastated. I was 22 and embarrassed by the whole thing because I had never failed before. And it was that failure that led to the talk show. Because they had no place else to put me, they put me on a talk show in the morning. And I'm telling you, the hour I interviewed -- my very first interview was the Carvel Ice Cream Man, and Benny from "All My Children" -- I'll never forget it. I came off the air, thinking, "This is what I should have been doing." Because it was like breathing to me, like breathing. You just talk. "Be yourself" is really what I had learned to do.
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Oprah Winfrey
Entertainment Executive
Recently, someone criticized us for airing a show on mothers who had gone through postpartum depression and had killed their children. They were saying that the show should not have aired in the afternoon because of other children watching. I absolutely agree with that. That's a very valid point. We should have considered that. That's one of the things I did not think about. I'm thinking that I'm going to help all these mothers who are going through this, but that person was absolutely right. So if the criticism is valid and comes from a point of view of being well thought out, and not just to attack, I accept it. I accept it and I usually get better as a result of it. Critics have actually helped me to get better.
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Tom Wolfe
America's Master Novelist
So I managed to get into that program at Yale, which turned out to be a terrific choice for somebody who wants to write. A bad choice if you want to -- as I was going to do -- be a teacher, because there are not that many American Studies departments. And a lot of the people who graduate from that program would end up at the bottom of the heap in somebody's history department or English department. But, it's absolutely great for writers. I discovered sociology there, which was like a light bulb going on over my head. Like most liberal arts students, I'd always looked down my nose at sociology as this kind of bogus science. When I finally had to deal with it in graduate school, I quickly came to the conclusion, which I maintain to this day, that it is, in fact, the queen of the sciences. I won't get into this, but biology, in my mind, is a subset of sociology, not the other way around.
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John Wooden
Basketball's Coaching Legend
John Wooden: Just do the best you can. Don't worry. I think the pressure -- you'd better put pressure on yourself and do a good job. And if you put pressure on yourself to do a good job, you'll do a good job. Nobody can do more than that. If you're affected by those alumni and those outside pressures or what not, if you're worried about your job for any other reason, you have reason to. But I can say honestly, and I'm very sincere about it, the pressure didn't bother me. The pressure didn't bother me. It gets to be like Richard Washington, who hit that shot to win the Louisville game. Someone said, "How in the world did you have what you set up to get Washington that shot?" And I said, "He's the wonder shooter." I said, "First of all, he's a pretty good shooter." I said, "Second, Richard's loose as a goose. And if he misses? To him, you can't make them all." But he didn't expect to miss, because he's a good shooter. He expected to make that shot. Now if I had let somebody else shoot that shot, they'd feel they have to make it. If you feel you have to do it, that, I think, hurts your chances of doing it. It's kind of like character and reputation. Your character is what you are, and you're the only one that truly knows that. Your reputation is what others perceive it to be, and they can be wrong. So which is the most important? What you really are. It doesn't make any difference what others might think. You'd like for them to think well of you, but it really doesn't make any difference. You'd just like for them to. But boy, it's very important what you think about yourself. That's very important. That's probably the most important thing there is.
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