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When I spent time with my father, it wasn't playing ball in the back yard. I came to his office and listened to him do business or sat in on meetings. I walked job sites. On Saturday, we'd see my grandfather in Queens for a couple hours, and then he'd say, 'Let's go collect rent!'

My father paid for my education; then he made it clear that I was on my own.

I was studying at Stanford University with two quarters left to go before receiving an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering. Then, I got the telephone call from my mother. I had no choice. I went home, and I jumped into the company feet first, right from day one. There was no time to grieve my father.

I come from a very working class background. My dad worked in a factory for 40 years. We all put ourselves through school.

My granddad was a hard worker, and my dad is, too. It was instilled in me as a kid. I never got pocket money; I had to earn it. I had two paper rounds before school, not just one. Wherever I worked, whether it was at football, in the pub, I'd do whatever was asked of me - and more.

My father raised us to step toward trouble rather than to step away from it.

My father, who was from a wealthy family and highly educated, a lawyer, Yale and Columbia, walked out with the benefit of a healthy push from my mother, a seventh grade graduate, who took a typing course and got a secretarial job as fast as she could.

My dad let me figure out what I wanted to do on my own.

My father was a small-businessman, and if he didn't get up and go to work, there would be no business.

I thought my dad was out of work, because my friends had fathers with briefcases who'd go off somewhere with bow ties on. But my father would finish breakfast and go back to his room.