I'd read about Alexander Imich, a Polish-born 'psychic researcher,' in 'The New York Times' not long after he'd turned 111 and had been declared the oldest man on earth.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Imagine if Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein were all alive 10, 20, 30 years before we know them to be alive; it would have advanced the world that much sooner.
When he was twenty-three or twenty-four my father began to learn German and read philosophy in his spare hours, which did not look as though he were destined to remain long on board ship!
My father always had people around the house who were famous psychics.
I once wrote that Lord Moran, Churchill's doctor, had doctored his diaries as well as his famous patient. That was true but unfair. Although their authenticity as contemporary, daily accounts is often questionable, the observations are quite wonderful.
My father was this huge, influential intellectual in the '60s and '70s. He was one of the main players in the cultural discussion in Sweden, the editor of papers.
I discovered Orson Welles in college; my freshman English professor screened 'Citizen Kane' for us, and I wound up writing a 20-page term paper on it.
He was the editor of our paper. He created the publishing house in Hebrew. He was - I wouldn't say the 'guru' - but really he was our teacher and a most respected man. I wrote for the paper of the youth movement.
My dad, for the first 15 years of my career, on every visit he made to a play or a film set, would find the oldest person on set and say, 'Do you think my son has a future?'
As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.