Summary

From big cities to farm communities, from office cubicles to hospital wards, from Normandy Beach to Boston's Fenway Park, the contributors to this remarkable volume -- selected from among thousands in a nationwide search --- tell riveting stories about the words that changed their lives forever.

Author Biography

Marlo Thomas graduated from the University of Southern California with a teaching degree. She is the author of two bestselling books, Free to Be...You and Me and Free to Be...a Family. Ms. Thomas has won four Emmys,® the Peabody Award and has been inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame for her work in television, including the long-running hit series That Girl, which she conceived, produced, and starred in. She serves on the Professional Advisory Board and as the National Outreach Director for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Ms. Thomas lives in New York with her husband, Phil Donahue.

Contents

Muhammad Ali

Christiane Amanpour

Stephen Ambrose

Jennifer Aniston

Lance Armstrong

Candice Bergen

Jeff Bezos

David Boies

Tom Brokaw

Mel Brooks

Barbara Bush

Laura Bush

President Jimmy Carter

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Chuck Close

Kenneth Cole

Bill Cosby

Katie Couric

Cindy Crawford

Walter Cronkite

Cameron Crowe

Billy Crystal

Ellen DeGeneres

Barry Diller

Dr. Peter Doherty

Phil Donahue

Michael Eisner

Daniel Ellsberg

Betty Ford

Diane von Furstenberg

Frank Gehry

Richard Gephardt

The Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Rudolph Giuliani

Whoopi Goldberg

William Goldman

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Matt Groening

Uta Hagen

Scott Hamilton

Mia Hamm

Dr. David Ho

Arianna Huffington

James Jeffords

Philip Johnson

Robert Johnson

Quincy Jones

Andrea Jung

David E. Kelley

Billie Jean King

Ted Koppel

Ralph Lauren

Ang Lee

John Leguizamo

Jay Leno

Maya Lin

David Mamet

Wilma Mankiller

Mary Matalin

Dave Matthews

John McCain

Paul McCartney

Dennis Miller

Toni Morrison

Ralph Nader

Willie Nelson

Paul Newman

Mike Nichols

Jack Nicholson

Conan O'Brien

Rosie O'Donnell

Shaquille O'Neal

Al Pacino

Gwyneth Paltrow

Sarah Jessica Parker

Sean Penn

Itzhak Perlman

Bob Pittman

Sidney Poitier

Vladimir Pozner

Anna Quindlen

Dr. Sally Ride

Cal Ripken Jr.

Dennis Rivera

Chris Rock

Ray Romano

Carlos Santana

Diane Sawyer

Martin Sheen

Dr. Ruth Simmons

Carly Simon

Sammy Sosa

Steven Spielberg

George Steinbrenner

Gloria Steinem

Martha Stewart

Amy Tan

Julie Taymor

Twyla Tharp

Ted Turner

Mike Wallace

Barbara Walters

Vera Wang

Wendy Wasserstein

Maxine Waters

Venus Williams

Oprah Winfrey

Tom Wolfe

A Letter from the Dalai Lama

Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

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Excerpts

Foreword

"Tell me a fact and I'll learn. Tell me a truth and I'll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever."

-- Indian Proverb

When I was a child I loved to watch my father shave. I sat on the closed toilet seat and marveled at the sound of the razor gliding over his face, pushing aside the foamy soap like a shovel in the snow. I adored him, this grand figure who slapped lotion on his cheeks every morning, buttoned his clean white shirt and hugged me good-bye.

Once, my father made a movie with Margaret O'Brien and he often took me to the set. I would cue his lines as we drove to the MGM studios with the windows open and the heady mix of Old Spice and a Cuban cigar swirling about us as we carried on a kind of rehearsal in transit. On the set I played jacks with Margaret between takes, and when the bell rang, I would join the crew in their silence as the cameras rolled and the boom mike moved into position to record the dialogue I knew by heart.

I was in awe of my father and sinfully envious of Margaret O'Brien. I wore pigtails. I wanted freckles. I wanted to be Margaret O'Brien. Ten years later, at age seventeen, I got my chance.

I played the lead in Gigi in a summer stock production at the Laguna Playhouse south of Los Angeles. The excitement of finally being a real actress was painfully short-lived. All the interviews and all the reviews focused on my father. Would I be as good as my father? Was I as gifted, as funny? Would I be as popular? I was devastated.

I loved my father; my problem was Danny Thomas.

"Daddy," I began, "please don't be hurt when I tell you this. I want to change my name. I love you but I don't want to be a Thomas anymore."

I tried not to cry during the long silence. And then he said, "I raised you to be a thoroughbred. When thoroughbreds run they wear blinders to keep their eyes focused straight ahead with no distractions, no other horses. They hear the crowd but they don't listen. They just run their own race. That's what you have to do. Don't listen to anyone comparing you to me or to anyone else. You just run your own race."

The next night as the crowd filed into the theater, the stage manager knocked on my dressing room door and handed me a white box with a red ribbon. I opened it up and inside was a pair of old horse blinders with a little note that read, "Run your own race, Baby."

Run your own race, Baby.He could have said it a dozen other ways: "Be independent"; "Don't be influenced by others." But it wouldn't have been the same. He chose the right words at the right time. The old horse blinders were the right gift. And all through my life, I've been able to cut to the chase by asking myself, "Am I running my race or somebody else's?"

The impact those words had on me made me wonder if others had such words too. What follows on these pages are the stories that changed the lives of more than one hundred remarkable people who responded to my invitation to reach back into their own lives in search of that moment when words made all the difference. Each one is a brief glimpse into the heart, a moment of awakening, a lightbulb that revealed a truth that has stayed with them for a lifetime, or a challenge that moved them to action. Muhammad Ali responded to a teacher's assertion that he "ain't never gonna be nuthin'." Billy Crystal, Walter Cronkite, Katie Couric and Kenneth Cole also received words of discouragement that goaded them on to achievement. The right words moved Al Pacino to pull out of a downward spiral. Paul McCartney's words came in a dream; Steven Spielberg's came from Davey Crockett. Chris Rock's words, like mine, came from his father; Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's from her mother-in-law on the eve of her wedding. Rudolph Giuliani, Cindy Crawford and Gwyneth Paltrow heard the words that changed their lives during a moment of crisis. Itzhak Perlman spent his entire career, almost forty years, living by a single, eight-letter word first spoken to him by a Russian music teacher when he was ten years old.

All of these stories confirmed something I've always suspected: that whether we know it or not, each of us carries our own unique slogan, a custom-made catchphrase that resonates throughout our lives.

The royalties from this book will help fund research now underway at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the hospital my father founded in 1962. Along with our Nobel laureate Dr. Peter Doherty, our talented physicians, researchers and nurses strive every day to save the lives of children who come to our doors from all over the world and who are never turned away because of a family's inability to pay.

I thank the men and women who offered their stories for this book on behalf of the children, and with the hope that their right words at the right time would be just that to someone else.

And I thank my father for all his words that continue to live in my heart.

Marlo Thomas

New York City

Spring, 2002

Excerpted from The Right Words at the Right Time by Marlo Thomas
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.