So people ask, 'But how can you work for a friend?' I say it's because I know that the magazine is called 'O.' The bottom line is somebody has to have the final word. Oprah's not right all the time, but her record is pretty damn good. That's not to say you can't disagree.
You wanted me to do what? That I say no a second time to Barcelona? It was impossible for me. I'm in a crazy club there, next to the best. Every year, the club is semi-finalist or finalist of the Champions League!
What happens if you are the last (the very, very last) of your species, and you die - and humans notice? We live, increasingly, at a time when extinctions are recorded, remembered, and the last animal (or plant) in its line, by virtue of its being last, becomes a kind of celebrity. Its finality becomes a thing to honor.
About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
Last time I was in Jamaica I financed a teacher to teach in an orphanage.
The Lionsgate deal came at an opportune time. It allows us to get our projects financed and create long-form content without needing to be reliant on brand deals or crowdsourcing for external financing.
If I had learned more about business ahead of time, I would have been shaped into believing that it was only about finances and quality management.
But even at the height of these scandals, even at the time when our finances were at their worst, the NAACP branches - the grassroots - kept plugging away. They kept doing what they do, and they do it well.
What we have to find is the right level of regulation of our financial system so that it has the incentive to invest in things, but at the same time, it is sufficiently regulated so it can't get in the kind of trouble that we have seen in the past and we have seen recently.
It's great to talk about how good things are now. But we can't sit on our laurels and expect that our time will sustain itself if we don't do a better job on issues like education... It's absolutely the case that the low cost of college tuition that I was able to enjoy and the financial aid I was able to receive made my education possible.
From the beginning of time, we've had financial crises. People always blame the banks and for good reason. When you look for the root causes, they're almost always failed government policies.
A financial crisis is a great time for professional investors and a horrible time for average ones.
The only time in my career I've lost sleep - wake up 3:30 in the morning, and you know you're not going back to sleep - is when I've been an entrepreneur. Even in the financial crisis.
My low point was after being reorganized out of running Merrill Lynch. That dismissal deeply contradicted my sense of fairness, since, at the time, my team and I had done what we were brought in to do: We had turned Merrill Lynch around from the depths of the financial crisis.
I'm a lad of the '60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more.
Historically, philanthropy has been something that you do when you turn 65, and you are retired, and you have spent your life accumulating your financial resources, and now you finally have time to do it. But because of the Internet revolution, that in turn revolutionized economic growth and wealth generation.
In working with UNICEF our corporate partners have demonstrated time and again that their financial resources, leadership and expertise can bring about real and lasting benefits for the world's children.
Time is key to building your financial security.
The decisions you make when you leave school define the rest of your life. So, in terms of making the right choices for your financial security as you get older, my best advice is to do something you have an interest in and are passionate about, as you'll be working for a long time.
Financial support is one thing, but I always think what becomes really sacrificial is your time.
