When I grew up, there were common patterns to people's lives. Now everybody is just making it up as they go along.

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

'Your Life Calling' is the first thing in my long career I've ever actually invented. It is my entrepreneurial debut.

AARP knows the future is bright for a generation that's going to remain healthy and vital for 10, 20, 30, 40 more years. AARP has the information and resources people need throughout their process of reinvention.

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.

At midlife, I think a woman has more in common with her teenage children than anybody else. We all are kind of uncertain. We realize for the first time in either our lives or decades that we're in charge now.

Because our generation has waited so long to have babies, we feel we've 'discovered' something that women have been doing for thousands of years. I have no illusions that I will be in the same situation as the average working mother. I'm not trying to prove anything - I just want to have kids.

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.

I do like some of the perks, like being, recognized, especially if I've had my makeup done and I'm going to be photographed and people admire me. Who wouldn't like that?

I had had some months of depression. Not serious enough to keep me from work. So, I guess you'd call that a mild depression. It was becoming worse. And I was being treated for it with anti-depressants.

I hate my picture being taken. A photograph by definition captures one mood. And I have a million facets to my personality; I never use just one. That's why I like TV more.

I have a very good sense of tone, and it's possible to talk about very personal things and maintain a level of dignity and even privacy - to go to the place, to talk about it, but not get icky.

I have been fiercely private, in part because I could never understand how a journalist could be otherwise. I was also the mother of small children, and security concerns were paramount.

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.

I see myself as life-sized, certainly not a supersized personality, and apparently after 30 years of television, that's what the audience thinks of me as well. I know this because for the first time in my career, I've just seen market research, and the thing I am known for is being authentic.

I think my children know that Mother's priority is to be with them first. But I don't think it has to be an either/or situation. Work is very important to me, and it wouldn't be in the best interest of my children for me to stay home seven days a week.

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.

I think women think a lot about cycles, biological and personal. This year another cycle came around: my contract was up. It seemed an opportunity to take a life audit.

I was an unusually private person - in a way, kind of insufferably so. I think I thought the celebrity thing when it happened was a temporary phenomenon, and I was above it.

I would like to prove that on TV, everyday lives can be as compelling as the life-styles of the rich and famous. Especially lives that we catch at extraordinary moments.