There was a kind of cultural life in New York that wasn't as solidified as it is now, it wasn't as money-driven. If you look at the size of the successful art galleries compared to the size of galleries now - there was no such thing as the Gagosian Gallery or Pace Gallery. But it was a time when magazines were a vital part of American life, and Esquire gave me a free pass to every world - I could get to the art world, the theater world, the movie world. It allowed you to roam through the cultural life of New York City.

In America, people rarely stay in the town where they grew up, rarely stay in close proximity to their parents throughout their lives. You rarely find parents in their old age being taken care of by their children.

I couldn't sit down and write a novel or a short story - even now - because of my dyslexia. But I learned narration through movies.

Style lasts forever and taste doesn't.

People who go for humor are wonderful because they do great humor. People who go for wit and end up with humor are people who have made a mistake.

Style and taste do not have anything to do with the other. It's the difference between wit and humor.

After the war, photography came alive, in part because everybody started to use the 35mm camera, and worked on the street instead of in a studio, and that made an enormous difference in not only how photographs looked, but what they were about.