The farther you go...the harder it is to return. The world has many edges and it's easy to fall off.
I suppose if you've never bitten your nails, there isn't any way to explain the habit. It's not enjoyable, really, but there is a certain satisfaction - pride in a job well done.
The whole celebrity culture thing - I'm fascinated by, and repelled by, and yet I end up knowing about it.
I've always loved reporting from the field most of all. There's something about doing live TV and being there as it happens that's always appealed to me. I think there's great value to bearing witness to these events as they're actually happening.
My dad grew up really poor in Mississippi. I paid attention to that because I thought that's a healthier thing to pay attention to than, like, some statue of a great-great-great grandfather who has no connection to my life.
The fact is, I'm gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn't be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud.
Anyone who has experienced a certain amount of loss in their life has empathy for those who have experienced loss.
If I'm hip, we've got a problem in this country. I really shouldn't be held up as any model of hipness. If anything, I think I'm sort of old school in my approach to objective reporting and not wearing my opinion on my sleeve. There's a lot of that in American TV news these days. Too much, in fact.
There are some people who are Burger King people, and there are some people who are McDonald's people.
If I end up hosting 'Joker's Wild,' please shoot me.
That's the thing about suicide. Try as you might to remember how a person lived his life, you always end up thinking about how he ended it.
I think you have to be yourself, and you have to be real and you have to admit what you don't know, and talk about what you do know, and talk about what you don't know as long as you say you don't know it.
I think the notion of traditional anchor is fading away - the all-knowing, all-seeing person who speaks from on high. I don't think the audience really buys that anymore. As a viewer, I know I don't buy it.
If you feel like an outsider, you tend to observe things a lot more.
I can begin to understand how anchor monsters are made. If you're not careful, you can become used to being treated as though you're special and begin to expect it.
I've been addicted to TV since I emerged from the womb.
A lot of compelling stories in the world aren't being told, and the fact that people don't know about them compounds the suffering.
If someone knows me and likes me or my work, they're more likely to allow me to tell their story. But it also cuts the other way.
Anyone who says they're not afraid at the time of a hurricane is either a fool or a liar, or a little bit of both.
I think it's a good thing that there are bloggers out there watching very closely and holding people accountable. Everyone in the news should be able to hold up to that kind of scrutiny. I'm for as much transparency in the newsgathering process as possible.
The world reacts very strangely to people they see on TV, and I can begin to understand how anchor monsters are made. If you're not careful, you can become used to being treated as though you're special and begin to expect it. For a reporter, that's the kiss of death.
When I was younger, I talked to the adults around me that I respected most about how they got where they were, and none of them plotted a course they could have predicted, so it seemed a waste of time to plan too long-term. Since then, I've always gone on my instincts.
When a big event happens, people turn on to CNN, not only because they know there will be people there covering an event on the ground, but because they know we're going to cover it in a way that's non-partisan, that's not left or right.
I don't have much experience, but the few times when I would go on a date with a girl - like when I was 12 - there was a lot of sharing, and a lot of talking, and a lot of asking how I am. They thought we were dating, and I was sort of hoping to meet their brothers.
I have a friend - I send her one text and I get 20 texts back. Guys don't want a million texts. It's exhausting.
I've always giggled like a 13-year-old girl at a Justin Bieber meet and greet. There's nothing I can do about it but I've never not been able to stop.
I'd like to have kids at some point. I think I'll have a family someday.
Not to sound too Dr. Phil all of a sudden, but I think the key to survival is to embrace one's past and to not run away from it. And to come to some sort of relationship with it or understanding of it.
Our skin is very thin. It doesn't take much for us to jump off a ledge or to kill one another. It can happen very, very quickly.
I tend to relate more to people on television who are just themselves, for good or for bad, than I do to someone who I believe is putting on some sort of persona. The anchorman on 'The Simpsons' is a reasonable facsimile of some anchors who have that problem.
I understand why people might be interested. But I just don't talk about my personal life. It's a decision I made a long time ago, before I ever even knew anyone would be interested in my personal life.
I am sort of drawn toward places in the world where there is struggle and conflict.
Obviously I was well aware that I had what people consider a privileged upbringing. My mom was never a bake-cookies sort of mom. I really had no reins whatsoever.
If you learn the language of loss early, I think you seek out others who have experienced the same thing, who speak that same language of loss.
When my mom turned 91, I wanted to use the time that we have left in our lives to get to know each other as adults.
I realized I didn't want there to be anything left unsaid with my mom. I didn't want there to be questions that I still had about who she was and what her life was like. And I didn't want her to have questions about me as an adult.
My mother has been famous for longer than anyone else alive.
I wanted to be Amish when I was a kid. You just wear black and white - what could be better? One less thing to worry about.
I am boring. I'm fine with boring.
When you lose a parent at ten years old, the world seems like a much scarier place. It makes complete sense to me that I took survival courses when I was a teenager and started going to war zones as a reporter. I didn't ever want to be taken advantage of, and I wanted to be able to take care of those around me.
Never too late to change your relationship with somebody in your life.
In my real life, I wear a T-shirt, gray or white, and the same pair of jeans. Literally, the same pair of jeans every day.
I'm concerned about heart disease. I've raised money to fight heart disease; my dad died of it.
You might try the gym from time to time. It really is something you can incorporate into your life pretty seamlessly.
Most gyms now have TVs. You can prop up reading material on the cardio equipment.
My mom's made it clear to me that, like, there's no trust fund.
From the time I was growing up, if I felt that there was some, like, pot of gold waiting for me, I don't know that I would have been so motivated.
Who's, like, inherited a lot of money that has gone on to do things in our lives?
I've never been a Burger King person. I'm a total McDonald's person.
I lose my wallet all the time, and I break my phone all the time.
Misquoting drives me bananas.
To realize that your mother's love life has been far more interesting than one's own is a weird thing to discover.
A lot of people know the name Gloria Vanderbilt, but they don't really know the whole story behind her, the real person that she is.
I like new technology.
There's just a proliferation of blogs and the chattering classes and people talking. More avenues for people to make their feelings known, which is good.
I don't want to do anything that puts my team members, my camera people or producers, in danger, so it's an ongoing dialogue on all the stories that we do.
There's a number of places I've wanted to go but it's been determined too risky or that I'm relatively well-known, and therefore it might not be wise for me to pop up in this place.
I don't think I'm fearless at all. I think anybody who says they're fearless doesn't last very long. I think I'm pretty cautious, actually.
The farther you go, however, the harder it is to return. The world has many edges, and it's easy to fall off.
I don't believe in letting fear dictate what you do, but that doesn't mean you don't feel afraid or frightened. I think it's normal and healthy to be afraid in situations.
I think viewers realize that people are a lot more three-dimensional than TV has traditionally portrayed them, particularly in news.
The war in Afghanistan is underreported.
No one else will really care, but I missed the wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Also the war in Chechnya.
I still feel like I'm learning a lot and have a lot to learn and improve on.
I have no interest in jumping out of an airplane or any of the things people do for thrills, to push their limits and all that. To me, that seems foolish, and there's no point.
There was a time when I first started when I made a fake press pass and borrowed a camera and headed into wars, and for three years, that was the only kind of story I was interested in doing.
There are some things which are so horrific that some people feel they can't do anything about it: that the natural, understandable response is to tune it out.
I personally tend to be drawn to stories that aren't paid much attention to, or stories that aren't on people's radar.
Each child’s story is worthy of telling. There shouldn’t be a sliding scale of death. The weight of it is crushing.
It was important to me and, I think, important to my parents that I be on my own and figure things out on my own and kind of forge my own path, and I'm really grateful for that.
I always thought, 'I'm on my own, and that's the way it should be.'
Hope is not a plan
I think my mom and dad both wanted to get across to me that... I obviously grew up with great privilege and was very lucky and was able to afford college and not have student loans, and they would pay for college, but beyond that, it would be up to me to make a living.
Be honest about what you see, get out of the way and let the story reveal itself
The tide of history only advances when people make themselves fully visible.
I rarely asks people for advice or permission when I'm planning on doing something I feel strongly about. That only opens the plan up to be crapped on.
In a perfect world, I don't think it [one's sexual orientation] is anyone else's business, but I do think there is value in standing up and being counted.
Politics was his passion, but he wasn't suited for the rough-and-tumble of the game. He felt things too deeply. There was no wall between his head and his heart.
I’d wanted emotion but couldn’t find it here, so I settled for motion.
It's nice on the daytime format to focus on things that connect us.
I really like involvement with an audience.
He was forceful, domineering, and supremely sure of himself. When you have low self-esteem, as I did, those qualities are attractive.
