To understand KKR, I always like to say, don't congratulate us when we buy a company. Any fool can buy a company. Congratulate us when we sell it and when we've done something with it and created real value.

And make sure that capital structure we have in place is the right capital structure. I think that's the reason that we've been successful.

I thought at the time that I wanted to go into institutional sales, selling stocks and bonds to institutions. In those days, which was the 1960s, the institutional salesman was making about $100,000 a year. I thought that was just an enormous amount of money.

But once you buy a company, you are married. You are married to that company.

If you have something at risk, you think differently.

If you don't have integrity, you have nothing. You can't buy it. You can have all the money in the world, but if you are not a moral and ethical person, you really have nothing.

Going public is not a business plan.