I grew up with "Follies." I saw it when I was fifteen. It was the original production, and of course, that production will never be equaled.

At fifteen, it [ "Follies"] didn't have any kind of resonance with me, this show about regret and middle age.

I took many notes, more than usual before I sat down and wrote Act One, Scene One. I had perhaps eighty pages of notes. . . . I was so prepared that the script seemed inevitable. It was almost all there. I could almost collate it from my notes. The story line, the rather tenuous plot we have, seemed to work out itself. It was a very helpful way to write, and it wasn't so scary. I wasn't starting with a completely blank page.

I saw "Follies" again at thirty, and you know, I had this great appreciation for [Stephen] Sondheim's brilliance, his lyrics.

I always tend to say "no" to everything, but now I've decided to say "yes" to everything. Now, I'm doing all sorts of things that I would've said "no" to before.

I had two chances to fail [working for Disney]. The first one, they said was "too juvenile." The second one was,they give you general areas to work in. They said, "Set 'My Fair Lady' in ancient Egypt."I came up with this idea about an Egyptian princess, and I gave her, as a sidekick, a little scarab. I had a telephone meeting with the executive "handling" me, and he said, "I looked over the notes. Very cute. But lose the beetle.Beetles don't talk." Well, how do you answer that? I said, "Excuse me just a moment, I've got a teacup calling me on the other line."

I don't think I could ever go to Auschwitz, because when we took that tour of MGM, I nearly collapsed outside the Thalberg building.