YouSaid · the spoken record

Katherine Graham

lines on the record: 36
first: 2020-11-05
most recent: 2020-11-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I am grateful to be able to go on working and to like my new life so well that I don't miss the old one. It's dangerous when you are older to start living the past now that it's out of my system. I intend to live in the present looking forward to the future. I think that's fantastic advice to close on. We can learn from the past, but we're not going to spend any time there. Let's focus on the present and the future. I love that. That is where I'm going to leave the story for the full book, for the full book. For the full story, read the book. It's fantastic. You can go to amazon.com forward slash shop forward slash founders podcast.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are positive aspects to being old. Worry if not gone altogether, no longer haunt you in the middle of the night, and you are free or freer to turn down the things that bore you and spend time on matters and with people you enjoy.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As much detachment as possible. And in that process, I hope to arrive at some understanding of how people are formed by the way they grow up and further molded by the way they spend their days. That's a great sentence. I'm going to read it again at the end of the sentence. I hope to arrive at some understanding of how people are formed by the way they grow up and further modeled by the ways they spend their days. This is where she talks about aging and what's really important. It is my family and the engrossing pleasures that I've mentioned that help me face the unavoidable problems of age and the inevitable loss of friends. I will be publishing this book when I'm seventy nine. I've been fortunate, but old age is no barrel of laughs. The general slowing down mentally and physically that make denying of aging an impossibility. At the same time”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's when he then turned around and passed on to me. He helped me learn how to talk while my knees knocked. Now this is Charlie Munger's orangutan theory, which is freaking fantastic. Warren summed up our learning relationship by suggesting that I seem to go around as though I was seeing myself through the distorting mirrors of a carnival funhouse. He saw it as his task to get me a better mirror that could eliminate the distortions. He later told me that he subscribed to Charlie Munger's orangutan theory. was essentially contended that if a smart person goes into a room with an orangutan and explains whatever his or her ideas, the orangutan just sits there eating his banana, and at the end of the conversation the person explaining comes out smarter. I heard myself talk when I was with him, and I always get a”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I skipped over one more sentence before I get to Charlie Munger's orangutan theory. Warren has done so many things for me, but among the most important are the inroads he made on my insecurities. Warren is humanly wisely so naturally I began to share with him things in my private life, his comments always help me. So this is great, this is before me, and then I'll get to Munger's Orangut theory. I can't believe I almost skipped over this. This is really important. Just talk about, you know, I'm sharing him things with my private life. He helped me not be so insecure anymore. You know, what's the value of that? It's priceless. Again, he once told me that something, and this is fantastic advice. He once told me that someone in a Dale Carnegie course had said to him, just remember, we're not going to teach you how to keep your knees from knocking. All we're going to do is teach you how to talk while your knees knock.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First part of that sentence, of course, if you're going to get one on one lessons from Warren Buffett, of course, it's going to have effect on your business and your profession. Guess what? You can do that too. You just got to read his biographies and read his shareholder letters. But the second part, again, she's still not downplaying. My effect on his life is largely peripheral. Well, you were main, I mean, she doesn't know this because Snowball was published after she died, but you're a rather large character in his life as well. So again, don't downplay yourself. Let your light shine bright here.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Financial statements because just as with geography or humans, it's interesting to take a snapshot of a business, this is a quote from Warren now, it's interesting to take a snapshot of a business at widely different points in time and reflect on what factors produce change as well as what differentiates this specific pattern of development from others also observed. This is a hell of a sentence, Warren's effect on my life is central to everything that followed, while mine on his is largely peripheral. So again,”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because essentially, it's priceless. But people would pay a ton of money for that. He brought with him to our meetings as many annual reports as he could carry and took me through them, describing different kinds of businesses. This is what I really love because they go back in time, him and Charlie, and they read about their biography nuts, both of them, but they read about businesses well before they were born.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Warren was sending me a constant flow of helpful memos with advice and occasionally alerting me to problems of which I was unaware. In the beginning I didn't realize how fortunate I was to have this mentor. But I grew very dependent on him for advice and I liked it. In effect, he was beginning to teach me the fundamentals of thinking about business for which I had so longed. I started to call him two or three times a day. Imagine having one-on-one tutelage from Warren Buffett. That's insane. More on this, you know, kind of own business school of sorts, this personal curriculum that she's developing a warrant. Again, this is, I'm not reading from St. Peters. This is spread out by maybe 40, 50 pages. This goes on and on. My business education began in earnest. He literally took me to business school, which was just what I needed. How lucky I was to be educated by Warren Buffett and how many people would have given anything for the same experience. How much, if you could even pay for something like that?”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Getting investors like him on his side. She's hiring good executives. She's running the company yourself. Again, when you obtain, I'm going to read that sentence again because that's really interesting. When you obtain total participation by talented and intellectually diverse people without deluding authority, meaning you're still in charge, and at the same time enjoy yourself because she has a passion about what she's working on immensely, you are achieving something. That's fantastic advice from a youngish Warren Buffett. This theme continues. This is more on Warren as a mentor and a teacher. Remember, that's how he views himself. Yes, he's an investor, but he considers his shareholder his ability to teach everything he knows about business. Again, I know the book is the size of a textbook. You don't have to read in one sitting. I think I read it in a week. That was very unwise. I would not do that again. But I do think buying the book, and you can get the Kindle version. I have both. I have the Kindle version that goes up until 2018, and I have the physical version that goes from 2014. The Kindle version is like $2.99. Are you serious?”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Goodwill work. The conversation stopped for a second. Warren recalled I could see the look on your face like he asked you to explain Einstein's theory of relativity. Here was my chance to be a hero, so I jumped in and explained in a fairly succinct way how it worked. I think this was the real beginning of my knowing how much Warren would mean to me. After lunch, he and I spent an hour together, during which he offered to stop buying our stock because he perceived it was worrying me. He described his bite, that's in quotation marks, of the company as baby teeth, also in quotation marks, but added they look like wolf's fangs, I will take them out. Warren Romey a few days after lunch saying When you can obtain total participation by talented and intellectually diverse people without deluding authority, and at the same time enjoy yourself immensely, you are achieving something. So he's talking about what she's doing. She's learning.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Shareholder letters. I'm looking at the freaking book right now. It's like a textbook. It was the hardest thing I ever did. And if I could do that again, I recorded it in one sitting. Imagine sitting by yourself talking for three hours straight. I would have, if I could do it again, I would have recorded it multiple times and edit it together because it was so difficult, but I didn't know any better. But in any case, he's just a great writer. And listen to this sentence. Writing a check separates conviction from conversation.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And she keeps building a relationship with them, talking more and more to him. She's like, I don't think your assessment of him is accurate. In fact, I feel he's very, very wise. In fact, I was glad we had two, meaning going public. Although I still just like some of the responsibilities being public entails. The advent of Warren was only one of the positive things that resulted from our going public. It also gave us proper discipline about profit margins. So remember, the context of all this, what I'm reading to right now, she's 10 years in and she's still not confident. So she's going to talk more about that. And then I'm going to read from this letter that she kept that Warren wrote to her about why he made such a large investment in the company. Now, keep in mind, this book, you might have known Catherine Graham before this podcast is because Watergate Pentagon Papers, there was a movie I watched with Tom Hanks and Meryl Street. Merrill Street plays the character of Catherine Graham. I think it's called The Post.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Talking about how inadequate she was. This is amazing. I still felt like a pretender to the throne. There's imposter syndrome, right? Still takes place to this day. Very much on trial. I felt I was always taking an exam and I would fail if I missed a single answer. What most got in the way of my doing the kind of job I wanted to do was my insecurity. I adopted the assumption of many of my generation that women were intellectually inferior to men, that we were not capable of governing, leading, managing anything but our homes and our children. She believes that even though at the time she already had a decade of running a very complex and gigantic business and doing so while she believed she can't do so. Okay, so even this is a family business, she's eventually talked into by other people. This is pre-buffet to go public.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's ridiculous. I truly believe that other people in my position didn't make mistakes, also ridiculous. I couldn't see that everybody makes them, even people with great experience. What I did that I'm certain my male counterparts did not and which was particularly tormenting was to lie awake at night reliving events of the day, going over and over certain scenes, wondering how I could have managed whatever it was differently. She's saying that male counterparts do that. That's not true. I've done that before. I think you might have well. Everybody does this. Now I want to fast forward 10 years. 10 years she's been running the post, okay? Now we're in the mid 1970s. This is where Warren's going to get involved. But listen to this. Given this is how she felt, it's amazing that she succeeded. My expectations far exceeded my accomplishments. In fact, the years from the mid-1960s when she took over the paper to the mid-1970s rich and full as they were, were depressing. I seem to be carrying inadequacy as baggage. We are now on page 416. This is 400 pages of her.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To grasp the rudiments, who did what, when, why, where and how it's hard to describe how abysmally ignorant I was. I knew neither the substance of the business, neither the substance of the business, and journalistic worlds in which I was moving nor the processes through which these worlds operated. Despite my father's expertise and experience, I knew next to nothing about business and absolutely nothing about accounting. Her father knew everything, but now he's passed away. So this is the role, not a father figure role, but a mentor role that Warren's actually going to fulfill. I couldn't read or understand a balance sheet. I remember my complete befuddlement and my inability in the beginning to follow technical financial discussions. The mere mention of terms like liquidity made my eyes glaze over. I was also uneducated in the basics of the working world, how to relate to people professionally, how to tell people things that they might not want to hear, how to give praises as well as criticism, how to use time to the best effect.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is just a great sentence. Sometimes you don't really decide. You just move forward. And that is what I did. Moved forward blindly and mindlessly into a new and unknown life. And again, I just want to remind you, I really feel this second part of her life was much more enjoyable and much more authentic to who she really was than the first part. Obviously, unfortunately, she had to go through such a severe tragedy to get to that second part. So now in this section, she's going to talk about, you know, I don't know anything about running business. But really left out myself is she has passion and commitment. She can learn everything else. She can hire other people to teach her these things, but she has the two most important things. I'm not giving up. This is a family business, and I'm extremely passionate about it. I cared so much about the paper and about keeping in a family that despite my lack of knowledge and feelings of insecurity, I felt I had to make it work. Throughout the first weeks, I felt I was wandering around on a fog.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Much how everybody had handled this very difficult situation with professionalism, and you just wanted to say that you knew rumors were around and would be around that the company would be for sale or that some part of it would be, and you said that you wanted to make it clear that it was not for sale, no part of it was for sale. This was a family enterprise, and there was a new generation coming along. Okay, so now we start to see the very first inkling of her where she's building up her own strength. And this is as the years continue that, you know, this is not an overnight process. I think 10 years after running the company, she's still having serious self-doubts. But she says knowledge of that new generation, which were my children, was what led me, however, hesitantly, to the decision I made then to try and hold onto the company by going to work. And her children at this time, if I'm not mistaken, by the time Phil commits suicide, I think they have four kids.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not follow the footsteps of your father and work at it 24 hours each and every day. There is no greater wealth in health and that's advice that Phil never heeded. In fact, as he got, the sicker he got, the busier he got. And I think that contributed to his eventual suicide. Now we're already at the point of the story. We're on the other side of that line to demarcation. And now she has to make this decision, you know, because Phil dies. Everybody assumes, okay, well, they're going to sell the paper. No one's there to run it. And then this is where she's making the decision. I have to be the one that runs the company. I have to be the leader of the family here on end. She says, I recall walking to a room where the all-male board was gathered. To a man, they almost looked as stricken as I was. They also seemed to be looking at me hard to decipher what was there. Oz Elliott, one of the board members, later recalled what I said better than I could. You said you appreciated very well.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know how to look my best or to handle myself in social situations. I was afraid of being boring and went on believing that people related to us entirely because of Phil. So what she's really saying there is, you know, this time they might be coming friends with politicians, presidents, congressmen, senators, all kinds of ambassadors and everything else, but they don't really care about me. They're only talking to me because I'm married to Phil. And that's, again, just a devastating way to go through life. So something that exacerbated Phil's mental illness is the fact that he burned the candle at both ends, did not take care of his health at all. Another for myself in this page is take care of your health or nothing else matters. And he had to be hospitalized a couple times. Sometimes he would just have to take two or three weeks where he couldn't talk to anybody but Catherine. He was just so distraught and so just tightly wound and under a great deal of stress. So this is one of his one of”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, realizing that we had to work really hard to get it on a solid footing. So says there's no doubt in my mind that the struggle to survive was good for us. In business, you have to know what it is to be poor and stretch and fighting for your life against great odds. That's a description of the ideas of the Washington Post. Many of the young people on the paper today tend to think that the franchise was bestowed on the post and they take it for granted. We all had a deep fear that like the star, Washington Star family, there's one of their main competitors that wind up going out of business after like 128 years, we would someday become self-satisfied that fear permeates our family. And now here's another paragraph that I mentioned earlier that the book is just full of paragraphs just like this separated by years, multiple decades of her being insecure. Later on, she feels she has imposter syndrome that she doesn't belong. Despite my pleasure in the life I was leading during these years, I can now see that was having problems. I didn't acknowledge I was growing shyer and less confident as I got older.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Phil was either ill or depressed. Now in hindsight, they would diagnose somebody like Phil Graham as a manic depressive, right? But he hid that. They just thought it was erratic behavior maybe caused by alcohol or something like that. But he wouldn't talk about his depression. And like she said the day he committed suicide, she thought she was optimistic. She's like, oh, we've turned the corner. We're going to get back to being a loving family, not realizing that he had other ideas. But this idea, I never suspected that Phil was either ill or depressed. It just makes what happened even more shocking. Now, a large part of this book is the struggles to make the Washington Post a viable company. It goes, you know, maybe a decade of struggle, if not more. And so she puts out this paragraph, I think, talks about that. Like there's a lot of people today that are working in the Washington Post that think we just, you know, we were bestowed with this great friend.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I love this one paragraph because it's Phil Graham. Really what he's saying here is if you have a problem, maybe you benefit from looking at it from a different perspective. And this is right before America starts jumping into World War II. So this is one exchange between us. I had deplored the fact that we had the bad luck to live in a world with Hitler, to which Phil responded. I don't know. Maybe it's a privilege to have to fight the biggest son of a bitch in history. So after the war, her father starts broaching the subject of, hey, you know, I want to keep the post in the family. And I think Phil's the best route to do that. They're married at this time. And I'm going to read to you the section, but really listen to her response, which is, again, I think sometimes we can be blinded. We just accept something is true. In this case, we find out it's definitely not true.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And now I just have one sentence for you. This is the way she summarized working at a newspaper in San Francisco before going back to Washington. This is right after she graduated from college, if I'm not mistaken. And this gives you an insight. She really did love this industry, which is so... Which again, I just want to keep pounding on while she was meant to do what she, like this is what she loved to do. And yet her lack of self-confidence prevented her from doing that. I love those months I spent in San Francisco as I have loved very few times in my life. Keep in mind she's 79 years old when she's writing those words. This is, you know, she might be 22 at the time. I love those months I spent in San Francisco as I loved few times in my life.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Say thousands would fight for that as an influential position and an influential paper in the capital of the world's most important country. If I find for some reason that I am not fitted to the newspaper work and this may happen among other things, I function a little on the slow side. Again, she's so demeaning to herself. She's called herself ugly, doesn't think she's motivated enough. Now she's saying she's not smart enough. I function a little on the slow side, which is not good. I shall get out and consider it no disgrace. And so I would just stop and think about what she just said there. Like, she would consider it no disgrace. So this is something she wants to do, something that she doesn't think she can do, something that would be good for her family, yet saying that if it didn't happen to be no disgrace. I don't know if I agree with that. If we only have one shot at life, isn't it a disgrace to not actually do what you truly want to do?”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most tragic thing that ever happened to her, but in a weird way, and I hate to say like this, might be the best thing that ever happened. Phil has some serious problems, manic depression. He was extremely troubled, but he also was not, I don't know if she would agree with this statement, but reading this book, he was not a good husband. He would belittle her, he cheated on her. Six months before he kills himself, he leaves her for his employee and then admits to her in one of his like, it's almost like what we see. He just, he has these rants, which is like, oh yeah, it's not just Robin, which is his mistress. It's like, you know, it's this person, this person. She didn't know any of this, and he was just carrying on all these relationships. He was good friends with JFK. He had a lot of JFK in him, actually, is the way I would put it because JFK was doing the same things that Jackie Kennedy. But this is the sentence. I doubt my ability to carry a load like the Washington Post”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That she loves the newspaper industry, but again, she's just been brainwashed that it's just not in the cards for her because she was born female. I think I want to go into the newspaper business. The fact remains that what I am most interested in doing is reporting, possibly working up to political reporting later. As you can see, this is no help to dad. He wants and needs someone who is willing to go through the whole mill. So they're talking about the reason he winds up passing down to the paper to Phil Graham is because they can take care of circulation and management problems and run the actual business and deal with the editorials and the politicians and everything else. And she's saying, well, I just have a love of reporting. And then this is what she says here. Again, if you have a feeling like this, the way she feels in this next sentence, if Phil Graham never killed himself, she would have never had the career that she had, right? Which is the most tragic thing.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is what I was referencing earlier. She knows what she wants, but is full of doubt. And as I read this to you, this reminded me when I read this letter that she wrote, I saw a talk Kobe Bryant gave in China. And he was talking about what the biggest fear that we usually have in life is not things that are external. It's like, it's internal. It's that we know deep in our heart that we want to do something. But, you know, we're afraid to attempt it. What does it say about us if we go all in and we fail? And he says the biggest, the scariest thing, I think they differ quote from him was, you know, the scariest thing is admitting to yourself, I want that and then going for it. And his whole point, the reason he's telling this audience, a lot of young kids in the audience is you have to overcome that fear. If you've identified this is what you want to do in life, this is what you want your life to be. You have to go forward no matter what. And we see her kind of, she's admitted.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To give it to Phil, not even think about her. So, no, I left myself when does this deep love for the post begin? And the reason I wrote that is because now looking back, I highly suspect she always had that deep love, but she buried it because it wasn't even, it was such a remote possibility in her mind. Of course I'm not, I don't have the skills. I can't run a business. I can't do anything. This is what men do. And I think, again, that's just a devastating way to live your life.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When there's a lot of negatives of aging, but one of the benefits is you know you don't have worry, you're finally free to do what you really want to do. Unfortunately, at that point, what she realizes is that she only has about four or five more years left. But going back to this part about caring deeply, which is so bizarre to me why she just accepted her father's decision to not”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I told him in one of the great understatements of my life that I feared there was little he could do about that. So this becomes, and the Washington Post, when she starts to run it and she runs it up and she's heavily involved up until she dies, even though her son winds up taking over after her. But that was the deep love of her life. She never gets remarried. She becomes married to her career. And I think that's secretly what she wanted her entire life, but she was told that you shouldn't want that. Do you see what I mean here where it's very, it's almost like she's willing to let others dictate how her life should go. And again, one of my favorite ideas, it might be my favorite idea that I learned in that book, The Snowball, which is where I was introduced to Catherine Graham, is this idea that how Warren Buffett describes it. It's the difference between an inner and an outer scorecard. So he talks about he admired his father because he did an inner scorecard, meaning that he should...”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, something that's interesting to me and why I wanted to start the podcast with Phil's suicide. That's Phil Graham, her husband suicide, is because I feel that was the line of demarcation in her life. The beginning, the first, you know, in her 40s at the time, she lives to 84. So it's roughly the halfway mark of her life as well. And I feel the first 40 years of her life were more unhappy. I don't think she knew who she was as a person. I don't think she was living the life that she actually wanted to. And something I found really interesting is, you know, we see excerpts from her diary when she's much younger. She worked at newspapers before she got married. She had a deep love of the newspaper industry and the post. And that's what I'm going to read to you here real quick. Let me read the paragraph first. I'll leave the note. I left myself because I wasn't sure what was taking place at this point in the book. So it says much later, the depth of my caring was pointed out to me by Phil's psychiatrist who told me that Phil and I both had a problem. We cared too much about the Washington Post.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Else, but this is just very distressing this idea that she talks about it. She says it might have been on a subconscious level, but she was taught that her role in life is to find a man, get him to marry you, and then raise the children and be happy and content in your life doing that, but to not have any desire to excel professionally. And I think obviously, you know, now we live in a world that's much different than that, albeit not perfect, but this idea where 50% of human beings alive, we're taught not to try to fulfill their potential, I think is devastating. So also spread throughout the book is just some advice that her father, and this is as they start to grow, as she got older, they start to grow closer. And this is just a great quote from her father when others, he had already purchased the Washington Post at this point.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Specific future at all, rather than creating my own way, what I was trying to do all the time was figure out how to adjust to whatever life I found. And a few pages later we see another paragraph where it just continues to expound on the main theme of this book, which is she has a serious lack of self-esteem, which I think people would find surprising given how much she had later accomplished in her life. I was, I thought, realistic about my own assets. I hate that word, realistic, that is. I thought realistic about my own assets and abilities as I grew older. I was not very pretty. I seemed ungainly to myself. I didn't think I could excel, and I was sure I'd never attract a man whom I would like and who would not be viewed with condensation by my parents and siblings. So that goes back to what she was saying. Her parents had in her entire family had extremely high standards or high expectations of everybody.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Five children, I was oddly shielded from the rigors of living with parents who demanded perfection and from some of the eccentricities of our curious upbringing. Luck helped me be a survivor and gave me strength. My difficulties were much more tied to a lack of guiding personal relationships, for I had more or less to bring myself up emotionally and figure out how to deal with whatever situations confronted me. So I'm going to talk about that in a minute because her mom is almost like I would compare the way she presents her mom in this book to almost like the way like a Disney evil stepmother would be portrayed extremely selfish, egotistical, demeaning to the kids even though they're her biological kids. Just not a good mother figure at all. At the same time, I was surrounded by extreme luxury. I led a life structured and in many ways Spartan, circumscribed by schools and lessons.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can only say that he seems so much better that I stupidly was not worried enough. It never occurred to me that he must have planned the whole day at the farm to get to his guns as a way of freeing himself forever from the watchful eyes of the doctors and the world. He left no note of any kind.”
2020-11-05 · Founders · #152 Katherine Graham (Washington Post) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source