I really hope that the philanthropy movement is seen not just as wealthy people giving money away but wealthy people giving away their time, their energy and their ideas.

Persist - don't take no for an answer. If you're happy to sit at your desk and not take any risk, you'll be sitting at your desk for the next 20 years.

The world is a complicated place, and there's a lot of division between people. The performing arts tend to unify people in a way nothing else does.

When I worked in the White House for President Carter, we tried to do comprehensive tax reform and we made some progress, and other presidents have as well.

People used to think that private equity was basically just a compensation scheme, but it is much more about making companies more efficient.

I am involved in a lot of nonprofits. And when I reached the ripe old age of 60, I wanted to provide leadership to some I had been involved in.

I regard food as fuel. I am not a brunch person.

Sometimes the best decisions in life are on the spur of the moment. So I generally try to do what I think is right. And sometimes I make mistakes.

I'm blessed by the fact I only need five hours of sleep on a daily basis. I do tend to regard Saturday and Sunday as work days.

I realised how rich I had become and I asked myself, 'Do I really want to be the richest person in the cemetery?

What do most people say on their deathbed? They don't say, 'I wish I'd made more money.' What they say is, 'I wish I'd spent more time with my family and done more for society or my community.

It’s whatever the majority deems it to be. It’s not necessarily the best or the most logical, but it’s the one that has become adapted to the desires of society as a whole.

I tell him his business, all business, is legalized throat-cutting, like marriage is legalized fornication.

To torture a man you have to know his pleasures.

When you try to build Heaven on earth you end up building ghetto's of Hell

The real novelist, the perfectly simple human being, could go on, indefinitely imaging.

There's a side that I want to do just like really retarded arty films … like parody, pretentious art films that kind of are supposed to have some deep meaning.

I'm not worried. I'm in control.

When will we address the fact that rich, white people think they know what's in the best interest of children of African-Americans and Latinos - no matter what the parent's income or education level.

What was more humiliating, I wondered: having to beg for someone's cold chicken bones or being offered them?

You never know how much a man can't remember until he is called as a witness.