Diana Vreeland was "the Empress," the avatar of the age. An old name or old money were not enough to get you into Studio 54 - or Interview magazine, for that matter. You had to have a lot of something else, like looks or brains or wit or fabulous clothes.

Fortunately I had a great intern who did a lot of the research on Andy's prices, which of course are phenomenal, but getting them straight - you know, he's reached this $100million plateau that only a handful of other artists have reached, which puts him in the company of Cezanne, Klimt, Picasso, and such.

Very few people actually saw Andy's films like Chelsea Girls where he filmed seven hours, ran it on two screens, where each scene was in a different room at the Chelsea Hotel with these people he called 'Superstars" who were basically super-exhibitionists - the guy in one room high on LSD talking about masturbation, Brigid Berlin in another room playing a lesbian and shooting up people with amphetamines right through their jeans, it was all real and they were really doing it (though Brigid is now a proper lady), but you know Andy really did pre-date reality TV.

You can't hang around geniuses forever because they end up taking everything you've got. That's why they're the genius and you're not.

One thing about Andy Warhol that was remarkable and also key to his widespread appeal is that he was so open! He would get on the phone and talk to the kid who called to say he was a fan - you know, Andy would walk from his house every morning down to the Factory carrying a bunch of Interviews - people would stop him and he would sign them, and what have you.

What often seemed like meanness or coldness was really fear of emotions and intimacy.

He was, as Billy Name said in the acclaimed Ric Burns documentary about Andy Warhol, uninterested in being a second-tier artist. He was uninterested in being a first-tier artist! He wanted to be, you know, a god. Someone who completely changed the...he wanted to be Zeus with the lightning bolt and nothing less would have satisfied him.