Be cautious, understand the consequences of your decisions. You have to understand the consequences of every decision that you make. If you decide to be a writer, that's going to scale back your life, than when you decide to be an attorney. Y'know, if you send your kids to private school, then it's kind of like the federal budget, where if you spend money on one thing, but you have to cut on something else. So you just have to be aware, at all times, that every decision you make, has reverberations. And you have to understand those reverberations, and either you live with them, or you don't.

Everyone who is in a financial situation argues with his or her spouse. Many people argue with their children. Or they lose the respect of their children. I, fortunately, was not in that case, but I have friends, who've opened up to me, and their children turned on them! Not because they're bad kids, but because they say, "Well, you don't have the money that I need to do such-and-such a thing." You recede from the world. Because you don't want to deal with people. You don't want to socialize, because you have this deep, dark secret, which is absolutely, y'know, hollows you out.

I didn't really care about money. I really wanted to follow my bliss. I really wanted to do the things that would make my life satisfying, in the fullest sense, and I was never thinking about money when I made those decisions. And I certainly didn't want my life to be driven by money. I'd seen my father's' life driven that way, and, although again, in retrospect, I understand fully why he did that, I didn't wanna live looking for that kind of financial reward. I wanted to live with the emotional, psychological, and even moral reward of doing the kind of work I do, which is, y'know, writing.

Within the studies and on the screen, the Jews could simply create a new country - an empire of their own, so to speak, one where they would not only be admitted, but would govern as well. The would create its values and myths, its traditions and archetypes.

We lived in a very modest house. My father drove modest cars, we didn't travel, we didn't do any of the things that, were commensurate with the kind of income that he was making. So we got this kind of, double message, which was, y'know, "You work hard and you make as much money as you possibly can, but you don't spend any money." And you see how well I learned that lesson.

Yeah, we could have done things differently. But - If we'd done things differently, we wouldn't be who we are. We are the sum of the choices we make. Even the bad choices we make. I made a lot of bad choices, but on the other hand, I am who I am, and I'm proud of my work, and I'm proud of my family, and those are also the product of choices, including financial choices, that I made.

I call it financial impotence, this notion of not having enough money, because it has the same characteristics as sexual impotence. And men will never talk about sexual impotence, no matter how close you are to someone, but financial impotence is an even greater barrier. And, I broke that omerta. I had people walk up to me in the grocery store - Several people, coming up to me and saying, "Gosh. Let me tell you my story." People are so pent up with their sense of financial impotence, that they're dying to get it out!