My guess is that people look at me and project their own values - importance of family, ego is healthy but not the biggest thing. I don't know. I can't explain my popularity.

I've always been profoundly ambivalent about fame. I think it just eats the reality out of you and it can be intoxicating because I like some of it.

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

Well, every now and then I would hear the preposterous notion that that Jane Pauley sounds like Barbara Walters. Like I could if I tried?

A diagnosis is burden enough without being burdened by secrecy and shame.

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.

Most of us in the baby-boom generation were raised by full-time mothers. Even as recently as 14 years ago, 6 out of 10 mothers with babies were staying at home. Today that is totally reversed. Does that mean we love our children less than our mothers loved us? No, but it certainly causes a lot of guilt trips.