You have to keep being curious. The notion that the present is different than the past, and the future will be different than the present, and the present is past, as we say it. I think I, by nature, am an optimist. Maybe I was driven to escape from my childhood and to be something, create my own world or career the way I wanted it to be. And I keep doing that in very interesting ways.
Les WexnerMy favorite leader is George Washington. Because he came from very modest circumstances. He wasn't the son of a plantation owner. He was the son of a farmer. He had no formal education, very frustrated. He started writing a diary when he was in his teens, and he wrote things like, "When I grow up, I want to be respected. When I grow up, I want to be successful. When I grow up, I want to know things." What I find fascinating about Washington is he wanted to make something of himself.
Les WexnerI'm unhappy with the President Trump. I don't like his behavior, and I'm a Republican, and I don't like his policies because they're almost the antithesis of the American character of generosity, of charity, of welcoming, of helping, of taking risks. You think of the lives that were expended in World War I and World War II to help others, and they say now we'll draw up the bridge and we'll protect ourselves. We won't have a broader role in humanity.
Les WexnerMy Picassos and Ferraris - those are kind of just toys. Those aren't the things that matter. What matters in the car collecting or the art collecting is to learn about it, and then actually not the acquisition but to put them into a collection that I think is curated. You know, so something of me in the collection that the artist actually created the work. If I was going to collect art, it had to be something of me, my eye, things that appeal to me so when I looked at it, it would really look like a collection, not just an accumulation of stuff.
Les Wexner