ON THE MOVE TO CBS: "You know, it’s an adventure so with that it’s exciting, a little scary and anxiety producing but I’m thrilled."

ON HER EARLY YEARS: "I worked at ABC in Washington where I basically made coffee and Xeroxed. And then I went to CNN where I was an assignment editor and later a line producer. And then I went into local news in Miami and WRC in Washington and finally I covered the Pentagon for NBC before I took my job at the Today Show. But I think all those years behind the scenes I really learned how a place works and then I understood the role of the assignment editor and I understood what a producer had to deal with. So I think it gave me a very good understanding and respect for all these different positions in television news and it also allowed me to really improve and learn and hone my craft so by the time I got an opportunity I was really ready for it."

ON MAKING A CHANGE: "I just thought I was ready for a new chapter in my life. Professionally I wanted to do something new and challenging and this opportunity presented itself. So it was so serendipitous…which is a good SAT word... the timing just seemed so great that I thought why not give it a try. And I listened to my gut and trusted my gut and a small circle of friends, and my parents and my daughters and I just decided to go for it."

ON HER DAUGHTERS' REACTIONS: "I think they think it’s cool, to use their word. And I know that they know me as somebody who’s very interested in serious subjects and cares a lot about a lot of different things and I think they see this as an opportunity for me to tackle some of those serious subjects. And they loved having me on the Today show, but they sensed I was ready to move on and try something new and face a new challenge. So I think they are excited for me and at the same time they are very involved in their own lives as they should be. My oldest daughter is starting a new school, so that’s preoccupied her. My youngest daughter is busy doing the things she loves to do. So they have a very healthy perspective. You know they have a working mom like many children do and I’m changing jobs. And many other kids have their mothers change jobs or stop working or go back into the work force. So they’re taking it all in stride. They really do have so far good heads on their shoulders."

ON THE BEST PIECE OF ADVICE: "I think the best piece of advice I got was from my mom and dad and it’s been echoed by people who know me well. And that is simply be yourself. And don’t try to be something you’re not. Don’t try to put yourself in a place where it’s just not true to who you are. And I think it served me well throughout my career I’ve tried to be the person I am when the red light goes on and the red light goes off. Thought I think that and do the best job you can. It’s sort of what you tell your children. Do your best."

ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WORKING MORNING AND EVENING: "I think that clearly it’s a different format and I won’t be doing cooking segments with Martha Stewart or looking at the latest fall fashions, but having said that I hope very much the essence of who I am will still come through in how I approach stories, how I interview experts how I debrief correspondents and talk with them and that if I have any sort of skills that I think that includes the ability to be natural on television, and authentic….and to do things with a certain amount of humanity. So I hope those things will come through."

ON BEING NERVOUS: "Obviously I have some trepidation and butterflies about approaching this new very important job… very honored and prestigious position with this great tradition behind me. But I’m going to follow my parents’ advice which is be yourself and the advice that I give my kids that my parents’ gave me, do the best job you can. And that’s really all you can do."

ON TRYING A FRESH APPROACH: "We’re going to try some fresh approaches. I think we’re going to build on what Bob has already done in terms of more casual exchanges with reporters. I think we’re going to make a very serious effort to give people greater perspective. By the time they watch the Evening News these days they’ve heard the news pretty much all day long, many people have. If they’re looking at their internet, turning their car radios on, or maybe flipping on 24-hour cable television. So we need to give people a little something more not just what happened but why it happened. What are the ramifications of a certain event and why is it relevant to their lives."

ON STRIKING A BALANCE: "It’s a real balance. We want to maintain the great reputation of the CBS News team and the integrity of its product, but we also want to try some fresh approaches. So I think we’re going to tinker a bit with the car but we’re not going to do a massive overhaul and I think we have an opportunity to try some new things to take some new approaches, to dig a little deeper when necessary to try maybe people giving their opinions uninterrupted for a minute and a half, which is a long time actually in a newscast. And we’re going to try a lot of new things. Some of them will work, some of them won't. But I think there is something very liberating in the creative process about being able to mix things up a bit."

ON MAKING STORIES MORE UNDERSTANDABLE: "Our first charge is to make stories more understandable, to give people a greater perspective and it’s not enough necessarily to say this happened in Lebanon today, this happened in Israel…and no ceasefire. Sometimes we need to do a better job of explaining how did we get here in the first place. Why is there such hostility on both sides? Let’s here from a 28 year old Lebanese woman…and a 28-year old Israeli woman about their perspective. I mean I think we can go a little bit deeper because the superficial headlines…or this is what happened today, isn’t quite enough to leave people with a deeper understanding of any issue."

ON HOW SHE PREPARES: "How do you get ready, how do you prepare? You spend a lot of time getting to know people, you spend some time thinking how we can do an even better job than the Evening News is doing now. Bob Schieffer has been incredible. I think people love Bob. And he is such a great person. But I think we can build on some of the things that Bob has been doing in terms of slightly retooling the Evening News. I don’t think you want to give up the car and buy a whole new one necessarily, but I do think you can soup it up a little bit. So you maybe kick the tires and give it a little bit of a fresh paint job and that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to figure out how we can better serve the viewers and I think we have an opportunity to try some new things, to take some chances."

ON ANCHORING FROM A GLOBAL HOT SPOT: "We’re going to decide on a case by case basis. If my presence will serve a story and advance a story, obviously I’ll want to be there. I’m not necessarily interested in fronting a newscast at a global hotspot just to wear a flap jacket and say that I’m there. If I have real reporting to do, if I’ve got an important interview to do at that location, obviously I’ll be there. And clearly, I’ll want to make sure it’s safe. I’d want to make sure that all of our correspondents were in a situation that they are as safe as they can possibly be. So I think we’ll figure it out as time goes on and as stories arise."

ON BOB SCHIEFFER: "This show has been very reporter driven since Bob took over. He’s one of the most generous people on the planet and so gracious, and I think he really has seen this opportunity, this interim period as a chance for him to not only shape the newscast but help shape some of the journalists who are up-in-coming at CBS News. And I think he’s done a fantastic job."

ON WORKING AT 60 MINUTES: "I’ve been working on a piece with a producer there and to see her really roll up her sleeves and really dig in and do so much original reporting, you don’t find that that often in TV journalism these days because there is so much pressure to produce for the here and now, that to have some lead time and to really get into a subject is a real luxury. But that’s what they do every week on 60 Minutes and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be a part of that."

ON COVERING 9/11: "Oh it was… there are few words to describe what that experience was like. I think like so many other people in this country and throughout the world, I was watching it unfold on live television and I think because I'm a glass half-full person, I thought oh there was a terrible accident, somebody had a heart attack and thank goodness it is before 9 a.m. because most people won’t be at work yet. It's funny how your mind works and tries to grasp at the most positive scenario. Obviously when the second plane, live, plowed into the second tower, we knew and I remember my hand shaking like a leaf, it was so incredulous and so unbelievable to watch that happen and then in the days following that to see all of those people desperately desperately frantically searching for their loved ones--I mean it is a day I will never never forget. I think it was my worst moment as a human being, as a citizen of this country but, one of my proudest moments as a professional."