I didn't know my mother had it. I think a lot of women don't know their mothers had it; that's the sad thing about depression. You know, you don't function anymore. You shut down. You feel like you are in a void.

The other thing is that doctors test only the most common estrogen level. There are three kinds of estrogen in a woman but they don't test the other two because they are so rare; mine was the third kind of estrogen.

Little things in my past that I really thought were over and done with were still elements of the puzzle that weren't pieced together, and so she helped me do that.

What basically happens is your hormones get out of whack. Because of the stress in your life your body says, 'I need more hormones.' So, your hormones are trying to produce and produce and produce, and it's even more stressful and it is this wicked cycle.

This is a physical thing that is fixable. I know, I'm a survivor. Believe me, there was no way I thought I could survive. There are answers out there that need to be found.

The good Lord made us all out of iron. Then he turns up the heat to forge some of us into steel.

If you're going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now.

When you have a baby, love is automatic, when you get married, love is earned.

You are in the back of your head somewhere and you want to close your eyes and go away.

So, babies are taken from their mothers because they get temporarily insane and it's not the mother's fault. This is the thing: they shouldn't feel ashamed. They didn't cause this. It is not something they did to themselves.

There are some great questions to ask your doctor. If he says 'no,' then you find yourself a different doctor. There really has to be a change in how we medically look at women at this time. I mean, this is not just baby gloom.

This is a serious, serious condition that is also called postpartum psychosis. And that's where, literally, you get so bad that you end up either hurting the baby or killing yourself.

I lost boundaries as a child that I didn't even realize it and it wasn't talked about back then. You know, it was something you just buried and dealt with, and moved forward. What could you do about it?

I found for me that my safe place was work. I could control my environment. I became very fastidious and detailed, and wanted things a certain way.

We know well and we know chronically ill, but there is a whole bunch of gray in between where I think we can heal people before they become chronically sick. I believe our thoughts make us sick.

I didn't know my mother had it. I think a lot of women don't know their mothers had it; that's the sad thing about depression. You know, you don't function anymore. You shut down. You feel like you are in a void.

You know, you don't work 30 something years in this business without knowing how to push yourself. So, I just kept pushing myself and pushing myself. The other thing that happens is when your hormones get out of whack your emotions come up.

You just need to be honest with how you're feeling. But, a lot of women are afraid of it because they think, 'Oh, they are going to take my baby away. They're gonna call me incompetent. I'm going to lose my job. I've got to be tough, it's a man's world.'

I did a book signing when we were in New York the day before yesterday. A lady came through and she was just weeping, and said, 'I wish this would have been brought out sooner, my sister is in prison for suffocating her child.'

Being of service to others is what brings true happiness.

I am happy. I have a wonderful marriage. I was in a not-great second marriage for 20 years, then I fell in love with Steve, my first husband, again, and we remarried. I wore the dress from our first wedding in 1982 - it was tight, but I could get into it.

I don't claim to know everything. I claim to be a seeker of knowledge.

I don't know so much about my boys, but my girls, they all work with me. They know how to work. My daughters know it's not done till it's done, even if it's three or four in the morning. I don't want them to grow up with entitlement.

I feel blessed - I am a woman who has been able to work in the entertainment business for five decades. I don't want to age, but I would never take back a year for the wisdom I've gained in that time.

I have always lived the way I wanted regardless of whether or not it was popular.

I learned a great lesson from my mother on her deathbed. She counseled me on the importance of taking care of myself so I wouldn't end up in an unhealthy body like she did.

I never had a sister growing up. Donny was the closest thing.

That's what it is to be a grandma. All fun and no stress.

When I look in the mirror, I see my late mother: I have her nose, her dark eyes - I call them chocolate eyes - I have her colouring, and my hair is greying the same way, although I use colour and she didn't.

Women are so strong and knowledgeable. You know, instead of competing with each other, I would love to complete each other. Take away that wall of competition and say, 'Hey, let's just all get together and help each other be brilliant.'

You can do everything you can to try to stop bad things from happening to you, but eventually things will happen, so the best prevention is a positive attitude.

You need to be able to manage stress because hard times will come, and a positive outlook is what gets you through.

It's an amazing feeling to be appreciated for what you do and to feel like you have brought happiness to others.

If youre going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it you might as well laugh about it now.

When you have a baby love is automatic when you get married love is earned.

Being service to others is what brings true happiness.

Examples one finds in the philosophical literature are somebody who's seen the trial of a child of theirs, where they're being proved guilty of some crime that would drive the parent into a depression, maybe a suicidal depression.

Although I was not aware of it at the time, the experience of growing up during the Great Depression was to have a profound impact on my intellectual and professional career.

We had a booming stock market in 1929 and then went into the world's greatest depression. We have a booming stock market in 1999. Will the bubble somehow burst, and then we enter depression? Well, some things are not different.

In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression.

When I was in Philadelphia during the Depression in 1930 or '31, I got a very sad job as a night watchman in a garage. The cars in the garage had been abandoned by their owners, since they had lost their jobs and couldn't keep up the payments.

It is so often true that whether a person carries with him an atmosphere of gloom and depression or one of confidence and courage depends on his individual outlook.

This is what I am. I have periods of enormous self-destructive depression, where I go completely off my trolley and lose all sight of reality and reason.

Coming down off crack is like the worst depression. The worst.

Because its hard to realize now that that was the end of the great depression, you know. All of a sudden all of this is in front of me and I'm solvent, you know. I'm making some money and I know where my next meal is coming from, and I have a new pair of shoes and that's it.

So people have been hurting and I understand that. And it doesn't give them comfort or solace for me to tell them, you know, but for me, we would be in a worldwide depression.

You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.

The Great War proved how confused the world is. Depression is proving it again.

Good humor is a tonic for mind and body. It is the best antidote for anxiety and depression. It is a business asset. It attracts and keeps friends. It lightens human burdens. It is the direct route to serenity and contentment.