In my father's time - he was in college during many transitions in the late 1930s - they had great institutional loyalties... to his college, eventually the navy, the Democratic Party and certain ideals of our country. Those are the things that became broken with my generation.

There's a big difference between having relatives who have money and actually having it yourself. Just because you have a cousin who has a lot of money doesn't mean he shares it with you. Or that you'd ask him for a loan.

I've had no money, absolutely, from my family. They paid for a good education - or schools that purported to be a good education - but, um, not a dime.

I love watching the romantic comedies of the late '50s and early '60s. I used to have a rule that if Tony Randall's in it, it can't be bad.

I decided the moment I graduated from college that I would never wear blue jeans again. And I have never worn blue jeans again.

So something I've felt I've learned with The Cosmopolitans shoot is using some agility and changing things quickly. That's something I found really useful on this shoot too. The gestation of The Cosmopolitans and this are slightly different from my other films. The script would be done and I'd be cutting it, but I wasn't always writing new material.

I think Austin is read more now than Charles Dickens, and Dickens was much more popular in his day. She endures because of her classicism.