Americans are fascinated by our sexuality and frightened by it. And during the Reagan and Bush era you got an entire decade of anti-sex government. Sex is not the enemy. It is the beginning of civilization, family and tribe. Sex can be twisted and exploited, but in its most essential form, it's the best part of who we are. And it frightens us.

I’ve never thought of Playboy, quite frankly, as a sex magazine. I always thought of it as a lifestyle magazine in which sex was one important ingredient.

I was a very idealistic, very romantic kid in a very typically Midwestern Methodist repressed home. There was no show of affection of any kind, and I escaped to dreams and fantasies produced, by and large, by the music and the movies of the '30s.

My life is an open book. With illustrations.

It's good to be selfish. But not so self-centered that you never listen to other people.

The people who had the most impact on me when I was young were Freud and Darwin, but growing up I also had my film idols.

I always say now that I'm in my blonde years. Because since the end of my marriage, all of my girlfriends have been blonde.