So living with my dad for sure influenced me.

Growing up, it was the music, the style, it was what you saw, what you read, what you looked at, the vernacular that influenced you the most. I carried that, it was so important to me.

Oh, over the years, there are so many. One would be the man — I wanted to take his job away some day — Paul Zimmerman, sports editor of the L.A. Times. Jim Murray is writing for the Times now. Red Smith. I had the honor of meeting Grantland Rice way back when I was at the University of San Francisco. When we played New York in football back in 1951. Just a lot of good sports writers became friends of mine. And I respect them a great deal.

Well, naturally, my grandfather. He was a Hasid, meaning a member of the Hasidic community, and I loved him, I adored him. So thanks to him, I became a Hasid too. And my mother — who actually continued his tradition — she’s the one who brought me to Hasidic Masters. And all the stories I tell now — I’ve written so many books with Hasidic tales — these are not mine, these are theirs, my mother’s and my grandfather’s. My father taught me how to reason, how to reach my mind. My soul belonged to my grandfather and my mother. They enriched me, of course. They influenced me profoundly, to this day. When I write, I have the feeling, literally, physically, that one of them is behind my back, looking over my shoulder and reading what I’m writing. I’m terribly afraid of their judgment.

I want to persuade people that Culture, broadly defined (literature, philosophy, art, theatre, photography etc.) can be used as a guide to how to live. I believe in the practical application of Culture, Culture as self-help.

Be ambitious beyond merely dreaming of the first book being published. Already now try to imagine where you want this to go, where you want to be at 60.

failure. I dream of chapters I haven't written and things that I forgot to say in books I wrote three or seven years ago.

Roland Barthes' 'Camera Lucida'.

Machismo.

I believed that the real challenge in love was finding ‘the right one’. I now realise that it’s not a case of finding the right one, so much as learning to love rightly.