We need more than simply financial education. We need to re-orient ourselves mentally, in terms of what the American Dream is, and how we fit into it. And we have to adjust ourselves to understand that finances are not everything in life. That would go a long way, towards changing this winner-and-loser mentality. We have to - Allow people to feel that sense of success, so they won't feel the sense of shame.

More often than not "fair" and "balanced" may be mutually exclusive

For me, the moral dimension of life is that you are committed, to doing everything that you do, with a sense of excellence. That is the morality of writing, that you try and write as excellently as you possibly can. Or of teaching, or of childrearing, or of friendship. Of anything you do. And, I do try and live, as best I can, with all of the errors that I make, y'know, a value-driven life. And that is defining values as trying to give everything you do, everything you've got.

Obviously, psychologically, it would make all the difference in the world. But I think it would also make a big difference financially. If people understood, that, "Y'know, having all those things, that I was told I was supposed to have, to be successful, really is not a measure of success, and I can't have them anyway -" Yeah, that would make a big difference. It would've made a big difference, I think, in my life.

We all live in an ongoing series of calamities. I don't know of any individual who doesn't have a series of calamities. Life doesn't operate where, you make a certain amount of money, you pay your bills, you move on from day-to-day-to-day. No! What happens is, you make your money, you pay your bills, and then a new bill comes up that's completely unexpected.

My real problem was certainly decisions I made, and the optimism that I had in making them. Y'know, I mean, I lived within this kind of nimbus of optimism, that, no matter what I encountered, I would always overcome it. Well, optimism can be your worst enemy as well as your best friend, but the other side of this is, that, y'know, expenses grow. But our incomes have not.

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.