Every father was his own man. He did what he wanted. If your mother went shopping, your father never went with her.

There were very strict social conventions, and you adhered to it, and I think it gave you a lot of character. When a man said something, he meant it. He wasn't kidding around. There were no jokes involved. Nobody was in the mood to joke unless you hit a guy with a baseball bat.

My ambition was always to be a perfect picture of an American.

My purpose was what my father's purpose was - to make a living and to have a family. I was going to do the right thing. My dream to me was to have money to support it and to live in the kind of house I liked.

I came out of school one day, and there was this pulp magazine. It was a rainy day, and it was floating toward the sewer in the gutter. So I pick up this pulp magazine, and it's Wonder Stories, and it's got a rocket-ship on the cover, and I'd never seen a rocket-ship.

I've never done anything bad. I can't do anything bad. It's got to be professional. It's got to look professional. It's got to read professional. In other words, it serves its purpose by entertaining a reader.

An artist has to be humble, an editor must be officious, and a publisher must be somewhere out in the galaxy enjoying godhood. It was a caste system, pure and simple. And it was accepted that way. Nobody thought of contracts, nobody thought of insisting on better deals.