Life is too complicated not to be orderly.

We’re not so free that we don’t have to listen to rules, and laws, and regulations. Those are important. But the spirit, the freedom of the spirit, that’s what I think of American Dream, that we are free here to do what we want to do, what we set out to do.

I used to wear real fur, but, like many others, I had a change of heart when I learned what actually happens to the animals.

I have a lot of energy. I have a great desire to absorb information. I’m not a sponge exactly, but I find that something I look at — just walking around Williamsburg, for example — is a great opportunity for ideas. I’ve been here before, I’ve seen things before, but now my eye gets keener and keener. So I can pick up little things: just the pattern of a brick walk, or the way they’ve attached a light to a house.

Write the book you'd want to read.

I am not a rock star or a movie star; I'm a businessperson. I definitely know who my friends are. I'm much more open and trusting than, say, my daughter is.

It's sort of the American way to go up and down the ladder, maybe several times in a lifetime.