Jane Pauley

Journalist

1950-10-31

Quotes by Jane Pauley

• About the time I turned 50, I experienced the profound biological change that often accompanies women at that age. Also, I put two kids in college and lost both of my parents, so I'm no longer somebody's daughter.

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• I came back to work when my children were two months old. At that early age, they seem to have little awareness of anybody but their Raggedy Ann dolls, so it wasn't a matter of them missing me. I was missing them.

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• Your 40s are a major trough. About the age of 50, feelings of satisfaction begin to rebound and keep rising into your 50s, 60s and 70s, with health being a major factor.

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• Many people come to reinvention when life changes around them, but people come in all different stripes. I'm oriented to change.

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• I love working with an audience. I love working with actual people who, you know, if they're moved, you see it. If you say something they're stunned by, you see their jaws drop. If they're amused, they laugh - that kind of reinforcement, I totally adore.

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• I'm excited about going back to 'Today,' but, at odd moments, I'll grit my teeth in anxiety. I feel like a student before the start of school. I've got my new shoes and my book bag, but I'm not sure I'll remember how to do trigonometry. During my maternity leave, I haven't used many words of more than one syllable.

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• I would not take for granted that my personal life - because I knew better than anybody - that it was just a life. It was surprisingly an ordinary life.

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• I think the success of a talk show depends on how true it is to the personality of the person hosting it. The shows I really admire, like 'Oprah' and 'Ellen,' are distinctively like their hosts, so I think my show will be successful only if we try to stay consistent to my own sense of myself.

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• You can't look at a sleeping cat and be tense.

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• My parents were terrific - mother was a church organist and my father was probably the most respected person in our church outside of the minister and sometimes maybe that much. The neighbors all called him - a gentleman.

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• My tides were fluctuating, too - back and forth, back and forth - sometimes so fast they seemed to be spinning. They call this 'rapid cycling.' It's a marvel that a person can appear to be standing still when the mood tides are sloshing back and forth, sometimes sweeping in both directions at once. They call that a 'mixed state.'

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• I'm sorry, but I can't imagine being an American icon! It would be pretty difficult to look at your face in the mirror and think of yourself as that without laughing and spitting toothpaste all over!

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• Twins are a high-risk pregnancy, by definition. The quieter I am, the longer I can keep them growing.

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• I spent an awful lot of my life underestimating myself and, as a result, not exceeding my own expectations.

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• In the beginning when I sat next to Tom Brokaw on the 'Today' show, the stories I was interested in were those having to do with women and children and learning and health. In those days, 25 to 30 years ago, that was called soft news, and not in a nice way.

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• I'm not driven by killer ambition. I'm not a workaholic. I'm a good team player. I don't have to be captain, but I do want to play on a winning team.

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