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Alexandra and Matthew Reeve on their father, actor Christopher Reeve
Alexandra: Dad had always been a very active person, strong and self-disciplined, and that continued after his horseback-riding accident in 1995 [which paralyzed him from the neck down; he died in 2004]. He made physical rehab his new goal...Read the full story
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Here's what Paul Newman and [his wife] Joanne Woodward gave me and, I suspect, many others in the world: the gift of confidence.
They were the perfect parents.
I was 23. I was depressed and fragile and hardly here in this world... Read the full story
Andrew SouthamAndrew Southam
I've had the chance to meet many astonishing people I never dreamed of knowing when I was growing up on a dairy farm in Kansas. But few have inspired me as much as Maya Angelou...Read the full story
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It was the first day of my first real job in New York City, and there she was: my first real boss. Pat Cooper wore a dress-for-success suit and pearls as if she were the star of The Women...Read the full story
Cancer activist Dee Dee Ricks on cycling champion Lance Armstrong
Early last year, I was packing for spring break with my kids when I felt a lump in my breast. That was odd: Only months before, I'd had a routine exam and there were no abnormalities. I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and they said one breast would have to be removed quickly...Read the full story
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My mother is my hero. She once told me, "If you can't give 110 percent, you won't make it," and I've never forgotten that. She is my best friend, my motivator, and my most loyal ally. I wish everyone had at least one person who inspires him or her the way my mother inspires me.
Novelist Jacquelyn Mitchard on actress Jamie Lee Curtis
While sitting in a Los Angeles hotel lobby in 1996, I noticed the racehorse legs of the woman who was next to me. I turned and saw actress Jamie Lee Curtis...Read the full story
Photographed by Melanie Dunea/CPI
Writer A. J. Jacobs on former NY Governor Mario Cuomo
When I was 13, I met Mario Cuomo for five minutes. I don't imagine he spends a lot of time reminiscing about our talk. But I do. What he told me in those five minutes changed my life...Read the full story
David Paul Morris
I'm sort of a self-basting turkey. No one comes to mind as an inspiration. No teachers, and my parents never dispatched advice.
Honestly, the only person I can think of is a sort-of boyfriend...Read the full story
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If I could have been anything in my life, it would not have been a TV anchorman; it would have been a baseball player. I wanted to catch the ball the way Willie Mays [now 77] did...Read the full story
Courtesy Lang Lang
Pianist Lang Lang on opera star Luciano Pavarotti
Pavarotti's voice was like the sun- so bright, pure, and sensitive that it opened up your heart. It still does that for me whenever I hear his recordings [he died in 2007]...Read the full story
Photographed by Melanie Dunea/CPI
Educator Salome Thomas-El on teacher Marsha Pincus
She took the time to ask whether her students had eaten breakfast in the morning, or if they had enough warm clothes to wear in winter, or if there was someone there for them when they got home from school. My English teacher, Marsha Pincus, did all that and more for me when I was growing up in inner-city Philadelphia, one of eight kids raised by a single mother...Read the full story
Tamara Reynolds
Rolling, smoking, shaking junk-I drove a lot of junk. It might have looked good, broken down in the yard, but an $800 car is never going to take you very far, and when they broke down, it always seemed like it was someplace pitch-black and wet, or cold, or blistering hot...Read the full story
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Actress Marlo Thomas on her father, Danny Thomas
The greatest source of inspiration for me has always been my father. Though he's been gone for 17 years, his lessons still resonate. He taught me how to run my own race in life, about how giving is more enriching than taking, about how to tell the perfect joke. But the most inspiring thing he taught me was to forgive...Read the full story
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Biographer Alice Schroeder on investor Warren Buffett
Over the past five years, I've spent about 2,000 hours watching Warren Buffett work, and I've never seen anybody use his time more effectively. He does not do meetings, especially meetings where people sit around and plan their next one...Read the full story
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Designer Eileen Fisher on Economist Otto Scharmer
Some people help me see more in the world and make connections within it, and one of those people is Otto Scharmer. As a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he works on how organizations change and how we approach the future...Read the full story
Joy Glenn
Cosmetics CEO Bobbi Brown on baseball legend Yogi Berra
I'm probably one of the few people in America who fell in love with Yogi Berra not because he's a legendary baseball player but because he's a really nice guy...Read the full story
I thought this was an awesome inspiring article, but where is number 18? it's in the hard-cover?