"It took me a while to learn that certain people may have important skills that are not always blazin..." — Katharine Graham

I truly believed that other people in my position didn't make mistakes; I couldn't see that everybody makes them, even people with great experience.

My mother seemed to undermine so much of what I did, subtly belittling my choices and my activities in light of her greater, more important ones.

The image of me as someone who likes or can deal with a fight is wrong. Some people enjoy competition and dustups, and I wish I did, but I don't. But once you have started down a path, then I think you have to move forward. You can't give up.

At least through most of the 1960s, I basically lived in a man's world, hardly speaking to a woman all day except to the secretaries. But I was almost totally unaware of myself as an oddity and had no comprehension of the difficulties faced by working women in our organization and elsewhere.