A lot of my decisions are made by instinct – you have a hunch.

Intuition? They say intuition is sort of feeling and intellect going at the same time. It’s a knowingness. As I always say, it’s knowing when something isn’t quite correct and then knowing a way to make it correct. And intuition is, I always say, the number one tool for the artist, I think the number one tool for people in business, perhaps the number one tool for human beings. Knowing how to do something, how to make it feel correct for you.

No. You don't have to have rules. If you have rules—you know in cinema you have to be very pragmatic.

But the thing I think that thrust me possibly into the public consciousness, I had just been elected Bishop of Lesotho. I had gone there to become bishop and I went for a retreat. I don’t know — I mean, I don’t know what happened but it just seemed like God was saying to me, “You’ve got to write a letter to the Prime Minister.” And the letter wrote itself.

one of the things that I learned — and I also pass this on to our students — which is that knowledge is power.

You can see your political career going up in smoke, but more importantly, you also worry about your family.

And I never forgot what he said, Bill Clinton. He looked at me, and he said, “You know, Leon, you can be the greatest OMB director in the history of the world, but nobody’s going to remember you if the White House has fallen apart!” I never forgot that.

Italians are romantics, and my mother taught me the value of beauty and the appreciation for life.

When I have a sense that things are screwed up, and I’m just not sure whether or not we’ll find an answer, the thing I do is usually sit at the piano, and I play a song by Beethoven called Para Elisa (Für Elise)

The greatest fear I always had in the jobs I was in was that some son of a bitch I never knew or met was going to screw up, and I was going to get blamed for it. [laughs]