I really like involvement with an audience.
— Anderson Cooper
I think my mom and dad both wanted to get across to me that... I obviously grew up with great privilege and was very lucky and was able to afford college and not have student loans, and they would pay for college, but beyond that, it would be up to me to make a living.
I personally tend to be drawn to stories that aren't paid much attention to, or stories that aren't on people's radar.
I have no interest in jumping out of an airplane or any of the things people do for thrills, to push their limits and all that. To me, that seems foolish, and there's no point.
The war in Afghanistan is underreported.
I don't think I'm fearless at all. I think anybody who says they're fearless doesn't last very long. I think I'm pretty cautious, actually.
There's just a proliferation of blogs and the chattering classes and people talking. More avenues for people to make their feelings known, which is good.
To realize that your mother's love life has been far more interesting than one's own is a weird thing to discover.
I've never been a Burger King person. I'm a total McDonald's person.
My dad grew up really poor in Mississippi. I paid attention to that because I thought that's a healthier thing to pay attention to than, like, some statue of a great-great-great grandfather who has no connection to my life.
Most gyms now have TVs. You can prop up reading material on the cardio equipment.
In my real life, I wear a T-shirt, gray or white, and the same pair of jeans. Literally, the same pair of jeans every day.
I am boring. I'm fine with boring.
I realized I didn't want there to be anything left unsaid with my mom. I didn't want there to be questions that I still had about who she was and what her life was like. And I didn't want her to have questions about me as an adult.
If you feel like an outsider, you tend to observe things a lot more.
I understand why people might be interested. But I just don't talk about my personal life. It's a decision I made a long time ago, before I ever even knew anyone would be interested in my personal life.
I think the notion of traditional anchor is fading away - the all-knowing, all-seeing person who speaks from on high. I don't think the audience really buys that anymore. As a viewer, I know I don't buy it.
It's nice on the daytime format to focus on things that connect us.
I always thought, 'I'm on my own, and that's the way it should be.'
There are some things which are so horrific that some people feel they can't do anything about it: that the natural, understandable response is to tune it out.
I still feel like I'm learning a lot and have a lot to learn and improve on.
I think viewers realize that people are a lot more three-dimensional than TV has traditionally portrayed them, particularly in news.
There's a number of places I've wanted to go but it's been determined too risky or that I'm relatively well-known, and therefore it might not be wise for me to pop up in this place.
I like new technology.
Misquoting drives me bananas.
There are some people who are Burger King people, and there are some people who are McDonald's people.
From the time I was growing up, if I felt that there was some, like, pot of gold waiting for me, I don't know that I would have been so motivated.
You might try the gym from time to time. It really is something you can incorporate into your life pretty seamlessly.
Never too late to change your relationship with somebody in your life.
I wanted to be Amish when I was a kid. You just wear black and white - what could be better? One less thing to worry about.
When my mom turned 91, I wanted to use the time that we have left in our lives to get to know each other as adults.
Obviously I was well aware that I had what people consider a privileged upbringing. My mom was never a bake-cookies sort of mom. I really had no reins whatsoever.
If I end up hosting 'Joker's Wild,' please shoot me.
Our skin is very thin. It doesn't take much for us to jump off a ledge or to kill one another. It can happen very, very quickly.
I rarely asks people for advice or permission when I'm planning on doing something I feel strongly about. That only opens the plan up to be crapped on.
It was important to me and, I think, important to my parents that I be on my own and figure things out on my own and kind of forge my own path, and I'm really grateful for that.
There was a time when I first started when I made a fake press pass and borrowed a camera and headed into wars, and for three years, that was the only kind of story I was interested in doing.
No one else will really care, but I missed the wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Also the war in Chechnya.
I don't believe in letting fear dictate what you do, but that doesn't mean you don't feel afraid or frightened. I think it's normal and healthy to be afraid in situations.
I don't want to do anything that puts my team members, my camera people or producers, in danger, so it's an ongoing dialogue on all the stories that we do.
A lot of people know the name Gloria Vanderbilt, but they don't really know the whole story behind her, the real person that she is.
I lose my wallet all the time, and I break my phone all the time.
Who's, like, inherited a lot of money that has gone on to do things in our lives?
My mom's made it clear to me that, like, there's no trust fund.
I'm concerned about heart disease. I've raised money to fight heart disease; my dad died of it.
When you lose a parent at ten years old, the world seems like a much scarier place. It makes complete sense to me that I took survival courses when I was a teenager and started going to war zones as a reporter. I didn't ever want to be taken advantage of, and I wanted to be able to take care of those around me.
My mother has been famous for longer than anyone else alive.
If you learn the language of loss early, I think you seek out others who have experienced the same thing, who speak that same language of loss.
I am sort of drawn toward places in the world where there is struggle and conflict.
I tend to relate more to people on television who are just themselves, for good or for bad, than I do to someone who I believe is putting on some sort of persona. The anchorman on 'The Simpsons' is a reasonable facsimile of some anchors who have that problem.
