New York was big enough and wide enough that it allowed for reasonably eccentric people like me to thrive. It was a perfect place for me.

Style is the most ephemeral thing I know. It's not about how effective you are it's about how you are effective.

I was dyslexic as a child and it took me years to get passed that. I read a lot but it was hard and that didn't go away until my early-to-mid-twenties. So really what I was looking at were the photographs and the illustrations in magazines.

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.

Movie narration in the forties was radically different than the narrative involved in books.

Having one perfect thing was less important than having a range of ideas, realizing they were all taking you in a certain direction.