Quotes from Mariette Hartley

I'd make a terrible therapist.

I don't even consider it therapy anymore. I consider it availing myself of a guide.

I'm a firm believer in therapy.

Success in a career sometimes comes in strange ways. You grab it in whatever way it happens.

I give as much detail as I do about the bad times because people out there don't know that others have been through hell but then through the process of amazing grace. You hope that someone out there will hear what you have to say, and that it may matter.

My greatest strength as a person? I guess I get caught in it a lot, but I think it's my ability to put myself in someone else's shoes.

One of the wonderful things about Shakespeare is that he trusted an audience to move quickly with him. One moment tragedy, the next comedy.

I'm at my best when I'm thrown, even though I don't like to be thrown.

At some point you've got to get to yourself and say, 'Wait a minute, I've been handed this legacy but I have to become accountable so I don't hand a lot of it on to my children.'

My father was a very strong male figure to me as a child. He was very dashing, had a wonderful sense of humor and was romantically handsome in the Scott Fitzgerald genre.

I'm not a compulsive worker, and I've never been a workaholic, so if I have a three-week vacation, I don't want to do a movie-of-the-week.

I've been able to survive a lot of things, and I am especially interested in survivor stories.

During the years I was growing up, I was trying very hard to be a regular person.

My household, as I was growing up, was a house of hidden shame.

Tom Brokaw has friends who are actors, and yet he feels that, as bright as they are, they are not articulate. So he said how astonished he was that Sidney Poitier, with whom he'd just taped an interview, had been so articulate.

I'd say Bill Bixby's character in 'Beantown' is Tom Brokaw with a heart and a sense of humor.

Tom Brokaw has been criticized for not being patient enough with me. But, in his defense, he is a news purist, and what he does is absolutely right for him. When we were thrown together, there was the matter of an actress coming in to do the news. I was missing the camera, not reading very well - there was a lot of stuff I had to get used to.

The problem with 'Today' was whether it was an entertainment show. Tom Brokaw and I had that battle for three weeks. He's a purist, and I was brought in for entertainment.

I've tried to tone down some of my peppiness, but for those who don't like it, just as many do like it.

When you sing, you're releasing so much more than you are when you're speaking. You risk more as a singer.

I would be nowhere without my mistakes. I rely on them.

NBC President Fred Silverman told me he would change my life, and proceeded to offer me a five to seven-year contract to replace Jane Pauley as co-host of 'The Today Show.'

Dad was a hunter and had guns in the house all the time.

If I could change two things, it would be my chest.