When you first have a baby your life doesn't change. I mean you have a little less sleep and you drag these cuddly things around you and it's just amazing. But you still get to be you. Once they get to like five six and school and it starts to get like 'Wow they got real problems. They're my responsibility.' Oh my God. That is overwhelming.

If you're writing you're starting in private. It can really be this amazing private freeing experience. Forget that it's for other people - that comes in later.

It's been amazing the number of commercials that I've done starting back in 1968. It must be 8 000.

When I work alone it can be like dabbling with a canvas. Maybe you paint over bits and it starts to form its own life and lead you off in a direction. It becomes an intuitive subconscious process.

And I don't have any specific steps to take because I don't start the same way every time. But there is a knowing when it's enough and you can leave it alone.

It's necessary to start most work alone. But I'm tickled to death when I can pull somebody in or join someone whether it's borrowing poetry or traveling with an associate.

It felt like the first thing but when I first started out I got a job adapting a book by Russell Banks called 'Rule Of The Bone.' I didn't do a very good job. I didn't really know what I was doing in general let alone how to adapt a book.

Science and vision are not opposites or even at odds. They need each other. I sometimes hear other startup folks say something along the lines of: 'If entrepreneurship was a science then anyone could do it.' I'd like to point out that even science is a science and still very few people can do it let alone do it well.

I feel most empires fell when they started to act human but then look at Russia. They kept a pretty strong hand and they fell from Afghanistan alone because Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. I guess you just can't sustain it.

I used to do a lot of interviews in the early '80s when my career started but it came to a point when I decided I didn't want to talk anymore and people kind of understood that and left me alone.