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I was graduated in 1940 with a degree of Bachelor of Science in Social Science but a major in Mathematics, a paradoxical combination that was prognostic of my future interests.

I didn't generate my success by being a prognosticator. I developed my reputation building our businesses by building great businesses and making them more efficient.

At a very young age I was predicting outcomes, trying to take all the information and find the best route to wherever I was going. I avoided a lot of pitfalls because of that.

When I think about my career, my successes are built on learning from failures.

On paper, my history says that my future was not very promising. But through grace, I have the opportunity to prove that where you start is not where you have to end up.

The hardships that I encountered in the past will help me succeed in the future.

And my career, the things that have happened have happened because of my music education background.

I'm a historian. The act of predicting the future discomfits me, in any event - and the bigger the prediction, the more distrusting I am.

I've always been fascinated by how the past impacts the present. For the first half of my career as a novelist, I wrote psychological suspense mysteries. I wanted to be a therapist but was told that while I was a fine diagnostician, I would be a terrible therapist because I wanted to solve everyone's problems.