Barbara Walters

I can get a better grasp of what is going on in the world from one good Washington dinner party than from all the background information NBC piles on my desk.

First of all, the Jewish religion has a great deal in common with the Christian religion because, as Rabbi Gillman points out in the show, Christianity is based on Judaism. Christ was Jewish.

A great many people think that polysyllables are a sign of intelligence.

The sports page records people’s accomplishments, the front page usually records nothing, but man’s failures.

Although I myself don’t go to church or synagogue, I do, whether it’s superstition or whatever, pray every time I get on a plane. I just automatically do it. I say the same thing every time.

I didn’t have a very religious family.

No one could ad lib like Peter. You would think that it was all scripted, he was so poetic, but it wasn’t.

I don’t know about you, but I can never get enough David Letterman.

A man cannot be made comfortable without his own approval.

Before we had airplanes and astronauts, we really thought that there was an actual place beyond the clouds, somewhere over the rainbow. There was an actual place, and we could go above the clouds and find it.there.

Show me someone who never gossips, and I will show you someone who is not interested in people.

The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it’s also full of fourth-rate readers.

Deep breaths are very helpful at shallow parties.

Wait for those unguarded moments. Relax the mood and, like the child dropping off to sleep, the subject often reveals his truest self.

But for Muslims, everything that they don’t have on earth is what they get in heaven. They can drink, they can have sex. All of the forbidden pleasures on earth, you can have in paradise.

Most of us have trouble juggling. The woman who says she doesn’t is someone whom I admire but have never met.

One may walk over the highest mountain one step at a time.

All of the religions – with the exception of Tibetan Buddhism, which doesn’t believe in a heaven – teach that heaven is a better place. At the end of the program, I say that heaven is a place where you are happy. All of the religions have that in common.

Don’t confuse being stimulating with being blunt.

If it’s a woman, it’s caustic; if it’s a man, it’s authoritative.

I also found that for myself, since I’ve had no religious education, it was so interesting to see the different versions of heaven and what life on earth means.

Parents of young children should realize that few people, and maybe no one, will find their children as enchanting as they do.

I found it interesting that as people become more technically oriented all over the world, at the same time people are becoming increasingly spiritual. The success of the Da Vinci code – even though it was a great yawn – also showed people’s interest in religion.

To not sing with an orchestra, to not be able to communicate through my voice, which I’ve done all my life, and not to be able to phrase lyrics and give people that kind of joy, I think I would be totally devastated.

Success can make you go one of two ways. It can make you a prima donna – or it can smooth the edges, take away the insecurities, let the nice things come out.

To feel valued, to know, even if only once in a while, that you can do a job well is an absolutely marvelous feeling.

And I really do believe that the most important thing is the way you live your life on earth. But I think it’s enormously comforting to believe that you’re going to see your loved ones.

Because there are so many shows on and because I’ve been so hands-on – I’ve had a piece on almost every single week – I don’t know how to cut back on that. You really can’t.

It would be nice to feel that we are a better world, a world of more compassion and a world of more humanity, and to believe in the basic goodness of man.