Quotes of the Day

Between harried campaign stops in Colorado last Friday, Teresa Heinz Kerry and Elizabeth Edwards sat down and spoke with TIME's Karen Tumulty for nearly an hour. Heinz Kerry grew up in Africa, married a Senator who was also heir to the Heinz-condiment fortune, then saw her life shattered when he died in a 1991 plane crash. Her second marriage, in 1995, was to another Senator named John—this one aiming for the White House. Edwards, a Navy brat, is an accomplished bankruptcy lawyer who married her law school classmate before he made millions dazzling juries across North Carolina. Their 16-year-old son's 1996 death in an auto accident sent them in other directions: him, into a meteoric rise in politics; her, into a second round of motherhood, having one baby at 48 and another at 50. Heinz Kerry and Edwards had a lot to say about where life has brought them—and where they hope it will still take them.

TIME: As different as your lives have been, one thing you share is that your lives were once blown apart by tragedy and you both built entirely different ones after that. Have you talked about that much?

EDWARDS: Not too much. You recognize a survivor when you see one. You recognize a fighter when you see one.

Heinz Kerry: Actually, when I first met you and I was told you lost your son, I think I told you that I had also lost my sister at about the same age.

EDWARDS: That's right.

HEINZ KERRY: Common experiences tell people a lot. You know what you managed to go through, and you might know what still might hurt. So it's kind of an unspoken language about a reality that is always there even if you're doing well. You never stop loving the people that died. Never ever ever ever ever. And the best way to remember them is by doing great things.

EDWARDS: That's exactly right.

HEINZ KERRY: You live their memory by creating the things they would be doing.

TIME: How long does it take to reach a day when you don't cry?

EDWARDS: Never. You never know when something's going to hit you in a particular way and just knock you loose. On the other hand, I take great strength from the gifts I got from my relationship with my son, as I know Teresa does both from her relationship with her sister and her relationship with her first husband.

HEINZ KERRY: There are moments. The other day I was doing a fund raiser in New York in the house of people I didn't know, and all of a sudden he's diagnosed with very bad cancer and so neither of them could be there. And so she spoke over the phone. Then I thought of her not being there and why, and I started to speak and I burst out crying in front of a whole bunch of people I didn't know. I don't do that very often, hardly ever. But I did.

EDWARDS: Sometimes you can get through that and be the strength for [others who have suffered hardship], and then other times there's no gauging it. Everybody who's been through it will tell you exactly the same thing. This is not unique to us. There's a great Chinese proverb about a woman who loses her son. She goes to the priest and says, "You have to do something about this. You can't let this be." The priest says, "I can help you. You have to go to a house and get mustard seed, but you have to get it from a house that has no grief." And she went from house to house, and they had mustard seed but they also had grief. Everybody has their burdens, their grief that they carry with them.

TIME: What is the best single piece of advice you've ever given your husbands?

EDWARDS: My guess is our advice is the same, which is be true to yourself. They'll get advice to do something or say something that's not natural to them, and I'll pull them aside and say, "This doesn't sound like you. Don't do it."

HEINZ KERRY: They make the policy. They're the people who have to vote on things now. But also I had experiences and expertise, just as Elizabeth does in her fields, so of course they ask for advice, at least points of view, on things that we've done. [There is] value in a spouse who is intelligent and curious and challenging—in the good sense of the word challenging. But I have never pushed for a piece of legislation myself, [not] to my late husband or to John Kerry, this husband. And eventually they and their staffs end up doing what they're going to do.

EDWARDS: We are married to strong men who are willing to be married to strong women. They expect a certain degree of honesty. And they should get what they expect from the two of us.

TIME: Have you ever given your husbands a piece of advice that turned out to be a real clunker?

HEINZ KERRY: No, because I don't think they always follow my—you know, I say what I say, then they go and do what they want to do.

TIME: Which First Ladies do you admire?

HEINZ KERRY: Can you imagine what our country would have been if Abigail Adams hadn't been the wife of John Adams? The intelligence, the support, the capability, the management. Everything. The woman was unbelievable. I think that different women in this century have shown different types of strength, like Betty Ford with her problems. Eleanor Roosevelt, of course. She was a woman of her own making. And then there are some other wives that were more traditional wives and part of a certain time. Then you have someone like Hillary Clinton, who is more modern in the sense of wanting to be the woman politician and very focused on doing her thing seriously. Then you have someone like Laura Bush, who is much more in the mold of her mother-in-law. Supportive, with a sense of humor seemingly. I don't know her well, but she seems the right wife for her husband, and I'm glad that she was there on 9/11. And Rosalynn Carter. I knew them, but I was still young. Obviously, she's extremely bright. I keep thinking, What would Rosalynn have done had she been Elizabeth, you know, with a law degree and literature degree? She might not have been that different, but what would she have done had she had those things? I think she's extremely capable, and she's been a great partner to her husband.

EDWARDS: That's the best, isn't it? I think being an effective First Lady is first of all being the partner that your husband needs. If someone undertakes a job of the magnitude of President of the United States, they need a partner who they completely trust.

TIME: Have you read Hillary Clinton's book or Bill Clinton's?

HEINZ KERRY: I haven't had time. Reading on the campaign trail is studying, studying, studying, studying and newspapers and studying. I've been reading the Life of Pi [Yann Martel] and Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight [Alexandra Fuller], little chapters here and there, and A History of the American People by Paul Johnson. And that's all the books I can read right now.

EDWARDS: I have read a large portion of Hillary's book, but I have not read any of President Clinton's book yet. I'm not gonna tell you I've finished Hillary's though, because I didn't. I was reading it on the campaign trail, which is a very bad place to try to read something.

TIME: What do you like the best and least about life on the campaign trail? What tricks do you have for keeping your sanity?

HEINZ KERRY: People and their stories are the inspiration. The downsides are my inability to control my weight because I'm not exercising. For peace of mind, the mind-set is, Stay calm, stay humble, stay strong physically and keep a great sense of humor.

EDWARDS: For me it's just the same positive—seeing people, seeing the energy they have. I heard someone say you couldn't possibly enjoy this. Well, that's wrong. I think a lot of people would really enjoy seeing energized Americans all over the country. But the bad part for me is the juggling with the children. The No. 1 thing to me is making certain that they see us enough, that we get to do things with them, and that we see them enough for our sake.

TIME: In that first photo op you all had together, I was struck by that picture of Mrs. Kerry reaching for Jack Edwards' thumb to dislodge it from his mouth. Was that just the old reflexes of a mother kicking in?

HEINZ KERRY: No, no, no. I had one thumb-sucker and two non-thumb-suckers, and I stupidly and naively forgot I was in front of a lot of cameras. And what I was trying to do was make sure he wasn't in the picture with a thumb in his mouth.

EDWARDS: Teresa and I thought absolutely nothing of this. It's been an enormous surprise to us that it's gotten this much attention.

HEINZ KERRY: I felt he was really very nervous, and so people are going to think, you know, Neh neh. I think he was just stunned by all the cameras.

TIME: Both of you have privileged lives. How do you keep in touch with what average Americans go through on a day-to-day basis?

EDWARDS: Yesterday I was shopping in Target, looking for the specials, like most average Americans. I think that you can have the tools of privilege without losing touch with regular lives. We started out, as Teresa did, with not the kind of means that we have today, and we haven't changed the way we live very drastically, except we live in a nicer house and we drive a nicer car. But we still try to not spend extravagantly. It is an enormous difference to have that economic safety net that most Americans don't have.

TIME: And of course on every wedding anniversary you dine at Wendy's, where you spent your first one. Mrs. Kerry, where do you and Senator Kerry spend your anniversaries?

HEINZ KERRY: In Nantucket, because that's where we got married. Normally just the two of us. This year we didn't. We spent it in Seattle. And the city was very warm to us.

I didn't answer that one question which she answered. What was it? It was this question here, about background, being well-off. People expect me to ride with angel's wings or something. But they don't expect me to do my own shopping, to cook, to take care of my kids, to make jams, to grow vegetables, to do all the things that I have always tried to do if I could. And I do.

TIME: Do you still do your own shopping?

HEINZ KERRY: Now I can't. I mean I could, but it would be such a fiasco at the Safeway. But until recently I always cooked. John is a good cook in some things, mostly desserts. He makes the best chocolate mousses and meringues. He takes pleasure in it. I thank goodness I grew up in a life that was rich in love, rich in order, rich in beauty, nature. Rich in the best ways a child's life should be rich—piano, music, books, stories, you name it. Good schools. So yes, I have a rich life that way. And did I ever go hungry? Not hungry. Did I ever do without things? Yes, I definitely did. It's all relative, of course, but when I was in Switzerland in college, my budget was $250 a month for everything, and I managed fine.

TIME: What did you have to do without?

HEINZ KERRY: For instance, one day a week I would not eat protein because I needed to buy a flower in the middle of winter. I would have to buy a rose or something that would take me to the outdoors. I ate simply. I lived the life of a student for 31?2 years. And I was happy. So I've been used to living within my budget and not to feel deprived because of it. And the other thing that I know, which is a great comfort to me, is how happy I can be, for instance, in Africa, in the bush, treating patients as I used to, helping my dad, sleeping in very clean but simple comfort, without any material appendages. I know I can be happy doing that.

TIME: The media tend to typecast people and tell the same stories about them over and over again. Do you find that frustrating?

HEINZ KERRY: I think that what people see when they meet us is what counts. The media have their definitions of what is expected or not or what's proper or not. And I think a person just has to be who they are and let it come out in the wash. You can't live your life for other people. You have to be who you are and do your best. I am vindicated by the reaction that people have. But you know what? I can't be different, anyway. So I have to do what I think I can do, and that's all I can do.

EDWARDS: I have to say that I saw Teresa out on the campaign trail in Iowa. And we were staying at a Ramada Inn in Iowa, eating breakfast at the hotel restaurant, and it wasn't as if she acted as if she was walking in a strange land. I think that as more and more people see that Teresa, a more accurate picture is drawn of her.

• KAREN TUMULTY