My advice to everybody - never give up and have great resiliency. Don't take the rejection personally, but listen if it’s intelligent and make changes if they’re needed and then move forward.

My father died at 42, of a heart attack. My mother was 32 then. She never wanted to be a victim. And that really resonated as a nine-year-old child. And one of the most revealing things was, very soon after my father died - he was in real estate and he owned some modest buildings - they came to my mother, the men that worked for him, and they said, "You don't have to worry. We will run the business and we will take care of you." And my mother said, "No, you won't. You will teach me how to run the business and I will take care of it and my children."

Everybody has to find it whatever helps. Religion is very helpful for people. A good friend is very helpful. A priest is very helpful. A rabbi is very helpful. You just have to find it. But when you get depressed or when you face a crisis, don't feel you have to do it alone.

I think, when I started to become successful in the movie business, my mother was very, very worried. She thought no one would want to marry me and she thought that was the most important thing. And she thought that it would affect my personal relations. And she said how worried she was that people would take advantage of me or I would meet the wrong people. When I was made head of the studio, one of her first things was, "Well, now no one will marry you. I hope you'll be happy, whatever."

There's a Harvard Business School thing that says, 'Every 10 years you should replant yourself,' and the only way to keep young is to learn new things and keep curious.

The movie business was changing, I didn't want to turn 60 in the job. I picked 60 as an age where you are young enough to have a new life but not so young you can wait. And I had this incredible need: I had been so blessed in life and I wanted to give back. So I left Paramount with great joy, I have to say, and with great fondness for the memories I have in the movie business.

We have many dreams and many different chapters in life and I think life is about chapters. For me, from the time I was pretty young, I always thought that if I was lucky enough to achieve my dreams and if I had financial security, at a certain point in my life I wanted to give back. I wanted, just corny as it sounds, to try and make the world a better place.