After world war all we got was a lot of conformity, and conservatism and when I was in college at the university of Illinois the skirt lengths dropped instead of going up as they had during the roaring twenties and I knew that was a very bad sign, and it is symbolic and reflective of a very repressive time, and some of that was laid the feet of the cold war.

Life and values do run in cycles.

I was raised in a typical Puritan Midwestern Methodist home and there was a lot of hurt and hypocrisy in those times. And I think that whatever part Playboy played and that I managed to play in terms of the sexual revolution came out of what I saw in the negative part of that life and tried to change things in some positive way so that people could choose alternate personal ways of living their lives.

I think that sexual oppression and dictatorship go hand in hand.

I didn't want to repeat my parents life. I saw in their lives a routine and a lack of dreaming, a lack of the possibilities, a lack of passion. And I didn't want to live without passion.

Follow your own particular dreams. We are handed a life by peers, parents and society, you can do that or follow your own dreams. Life is short, be a dreamer but be a practical person.

I had a stroke in 1985... I called it a "stroke of luck." I said, "Life is like a train trip. You're looking out the window and everything is whipping past and you're not really seeing anything, and you need to get off the train and walk around a bit."