Quotes from Lesley Stahl

I thought administration was the running of the office. The Xerox machine. Paying bills.

You never know when the best day of your life is going to be.

Life insurance companies are failing to pay out death benefits when they know the person is dead, and they're claiming they don't know.

Charlie didn't want to give up meat and smoking. Now he's gone.

I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima - and you know, is the price worth it?

I don't know of anybody's political bias at CBS News. We try very hard to get any opinion that we have out of our stories, and most of our stories are balanced.

I am convinced there's a gramma gene that disables the word "no.

Then, wham! My first grandchild was born... I was jolted, blindsided by a wallop of loving more intense than anything I could remember or had ever imagined.

I was trying to understand my grandmother feelings. Why, when I looked at and held the baby, I felt I was floating, that I was on a high.... I keep wanting to burst into song! So I wasn't crazy, & I wasn't alone. When a grandmother holds the baby, her brain, like a new mother's, can also be drenched in the bonding hormone oxytocin. Aha! There it was. We grandmas literally, actually fall in love.

In various surveys, nearly three-quarters of grandparents say that being a grandparent is the single most important and satisfying thing in their life. Most say being with their grandkids is more important to them than traveling or having financial security.

When I told him about Jordan, out flashed pictures of his grandkids. This was how I was introduced to the secret society of grans. We're instant compatriots. If you want to break the ice with someone who's in the society, all you have to do is ask, "So how old is yours?

Tom Brokaw said: "For parents, bribery is a white-collar crime; for grandparents, it's a business plan!

This is the only time in our lives we fall madly in love before we know what the person is like. ~Ellen Goodman

The strict mother she & her brother had grown up with was body-snatched. "...Who are you? What did you do with my mother?

Becoming a gran exhilarated me with a new purpose. The change was so big & granular & unexpected, I wanted to understand it. .,.. Does it happen this way to all grandmothers?

Grandchildren are the dessert course of life, or, as Steve Leber, who founded Grandparents.com, told me, "God gave us grandchildren to make up for aging." Ain't it the truth.

she felt as thought she was auditioning for the role of grandmother. Yes. That's what it felt like. Am I doing a good job with the baby? Do the parents approve? ... I thought she was loving my loving her daughter. I thought I would get the part.

I thought: This is the best of the best. I was filled with gratitude that they were letting me be part of it. Letting me help her. Love her. Hold the baby. Become a real grandmother. What a gift. I was *really* needed and it felt so damn good.

no matter how warm the relationship, there's always a certain etiquette when you deal with an in- law, a trace of formality.

It's never too late to have the best day of your life.

I'm going to be an orphan like you." .... "I miss everything.

When it was finally my turn, I felt I was growing a whole new chamber in my heart. I nearly swooned, staring at the baby like a lover. I'd never seen anything so delicate and beautiful, so sweet, every feature perfect.

I'm going to be an orphan like you." .... "I miss Dad every day" ... "I miss everything." ... I woke up early with a heavy sadness... I was so stressed that I woke up at 2 a.m., mad with remorse... Frantic...

At first I wondered if it was from seeing my child become a mother. Or maybe I was subliminally realizing the forwarding of my bloodline, that my DNA had transferred to the new generation. Was I hearing little cries of joy from my genes—"I am fulfilled!"? Meeting Jordan for the first time, January 30, 2011.