美国脱口秀明星——奥普拉·温弗里

奥普拉：在生活中实事求是的能力。你必须对自己诚实。诚实源自你的直觉，当你做某事时，它会告诉你是否做得对。如果你有了成就感、满足感和认为对世界有价值，你就知道你正在做正确的事情。你无须问任何人。当你正在做正确的事时，你不必问：“你认为这样做行吗？”这在任何层面都是适用的。

奥普拉：我觉得运气就是有准备地迎接机遇。我之所以如此强烈地感受到这点是有理由的，对我来说这不仅仅是一个说法。我在1973年被电视台录用，正好是在1971年和1972年的暴乱之后，其他的黑人和妇女也是在这时被雇佣。当时，人们指责我只是一个摆设。这并没有影响到我，因为我意识到我会一直在电视台呆下去。我一到电视台就意识到，谁也无法把我从这儿赶出去。这并不是阶段性的。我是自己创造了自己的运气。

America’s Talk Show Star – Oprah Winfrey

 “It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you. Always.”  -- Oprah Winfrey

Correspondent: You hear about child prodigies¹ on the violin, but you definitely were a prodigy as a speaker. That’s very unusual.

Oprah Winfrey: I was an orator for a long time. I’ve been an orator really, basically, all of my life. Since I was three and a half, I’ve been coming up in the church speaking. Other people were known for singing; I was known for talking.

C: Your father apparently had a strong influence on you when you were growing up, right?

Oprah: Yes, he was a big influence in my life. He had some concerns about me making the best of my life, and would not accept anything less than what he thought was my best. 

When I was living with my mother, I was very rebellious. I did everything I could get away with. I used to play all kinds of pranks². I used to lie to my mother all the time. When I moved to my father’s house, I never told another lie because I knew it wasn’t going to be accepted. I knew, “Okay, stop right here.”

C: Tell us how you happened to first co-host a talk show, and how that felt.

Oprah: I only came to co-host a talk show because I had failed at news, and I was going to be fired. I was devastated because up until that point, I had sort of cruised. I really hadn’t thought a lot about my life, or the direction it was taking. I was twenty-two and embarrassed by the whole thing because I had never failed before. And it was that failure that led to the talk show, because they had no place else to put me. And I’m telling you, the hour I interviewed -- my very first interview -- I’ll never forget it. I came off the air, thinking, “This is what I should have been doing.” Because it was like breathing to me. Like breathing.

C: Your ability to get people in your audience to open up to you is astounding.  To what do you attribute that?

Oprah: My ability to get people to open up is only attributed, I think, to the fact that there is a common bond in the human spirit. We all want the same things. And I know that. I really do know that I am no different than anybody else. I have to recognize that I’m as worthy as the next guy. And I think the moment you start thinking that you are better than somebody else, you’ve lost sight of who you are. Because the truth of the matter is, we are all the same. And I know that. I really know that. And I think people sense that.

So I think the reason people open up so much on the show is because I open up. I feel comfortable doing it. And they know that I am not going to ridicule³ them. I want everybody on the show, even if I disagree with them, to leave with a sense of dignity, to maintain their own dignity.

C: It seems that you are able to deal with criticism fairly well?

Oprah: If it’s the truth. Of all things I would say I’m a truth-seeker. I believe that, “The truth shall make you free.” I absolutely believe that. So if you are telling me the truth, I accept it and will move on it.

C: Someone said your career was kind of a sky-rocketing success. Do you think so?

Oprah: Well, you know, I don’t know if anybody really skyrockets to success. I think that success is a process. And I believe that my first Easter speech, at Kosciusko Baptist Church, at the age of three and a half, was the beginning. And that every other speech, every other book I read, every other time I spoke in public, was a building block.

So by the time I first sat down to audition in front of a television camera, and somebody said, “Read this,” what allowed me to read it so comfortably, and be so at ease with myself at that time, was the fact that I had been doing it a while. If I’d never read a book, or never spoken in public before, I’d have been traumatized⁴ by it.

C: What characteristics do you think are most important for having a fulfilling life?

Oprah: The ability to seek truth in your life. You have to be honest with yourself. Honesty comes from your natural instinct telling you when you are doing something, whether or not this feels right. You feel a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment and worthiness to the world, in such a way that you know that you are doing the right thing. You don’t have to ask anybody. When you are doing the right thing, you don’t have to say, “Do you think this is okay?” It works on every level.

C: How has luck affected your career?

Oprah: I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity. There’s a reason I feel so strongly about that, and it’s not just a saying for me. I was hired in television in 1973, right after the riots of ’71, ’72, and other blacks and female people were hired at the same time. People accused me of being a token at the time. It didn’t really bother me because I realized that I was going to stay there. Once I got there, I realized, nobody is getting me out of here. This is not just a phase for me. I sort of began to create my own luck.