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"  I had no idea what you would look like. I don&amp;#039;t know what&amp;#039;s early or what&amp;#039;s late in relation to a life. My father was drafted \u2014 I was in kindergarten. We had pictures of each child in the kindergarten class walking by and saluting my father, who was a private first class.  Bay Parkway was a big avenue \u2014 big. Wide. Although I&amp;#039;ve been back and it&amp;#039;s not as wide as I thought it was.  My parents said, &amp;quot;You won&amp;#039;t ever have better friends than us.&amp;quot; I thought, If you say so. You&amp;#039;re my gods. They weren&amp;#039;t right, but they meant well. When my father was already gone \u2014 he&amp;#039;s been gone for nearly twenty years now \u2014 his brother told me, &amp;quot;You know, your father never graduated high school.&amp;quot; And I thought, Why are you telling me that? It just seems like so many talented people come from Brooklyn. But so many people came here to live. There are talented people everywhere. I mean, we just found out about these 125,000 gorillas who were discovered in the Congo. This is an endangered species. So, I mean, there are undiscovered people in Brooklyn. I don&amp;#039;t want to be impressed. It distracts me.  I said to Mick Jagger once, around 1973, &amp;quot;What do you want to do beyond this?&amp;quot; He said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d like to make films.&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;With your juice, you can.&amp;quot; He said, &amp;quot;I know, but I don&amp;#039;t have the confidence yet.&amp;quot; Okay? My seven-year-old son was stuck in the same place Mick Jagger was. There is no escape. There&amp;#039;s no place to go. Our life is on earth. There I was in New York, and I had an Islamic cabdriver. At that time I was discovering Hakeem Olajuwon, who was as good as anybody I ever saw. And I said to the driver \u2014 I talk to people \u2014 I said to him, &amp;quot;As much as I love my children, I know that I don&amp;#039;t love my children more than you love your children.&amp;quot; We make war with each other because we don&amp;#039;t really understand each other.  There are whole species of fish that can change genders. We have to change. A Freudian psychiatrist once asked me if I considered myself to be omnipotent. I said, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know if I know what that word means.&amp;quot; He said, &amp;quot;All-powerful.&amp;quot; And I said no. But English wasn&amp;#039;t his first language \u2014 he was from Hungary. I think what he really meant to ask was, Are you aware that you&amp;#039;re oblivious to reality?  It is essential that I listen, so I can try to minimize problems that I create for myself. When Bob Costas asked me if I had ever had a drug problem, I said, No, I didn&amp;#039;t have a drug problem. I had a problem with reality. For a kid \u2014 or for a repressed, inhibited, shy person \u2014 to find out that you could have an effect on people by making a joke was interesting. So I would do that. But I&amp;#039;m not a practical joker. Clooney is. He loves to do that stuff.  The Ocean&amp;#039;s movies were fun, but it&amp;#039;s still business and work. At age two, children are so serious. They&amp;#039;re acting like you. My first wife, Barbra, mentioned the Dalai Lama to me once, and I&amp;#039;m not a wiseguy, but I went to Nate &amp;#039;n Al&amp;#039;s delicatessen and I sent her some corned beef, some pastrami, pickles, coleslaw, rye bread, mustard, and I signed it &amp;quot;From the Deli Lama.&amp;quot; Now it turns out that he&amp;#039;s great. I love him. We haven&amp;#039;t met, but he&amp;#039;s a great friend. Barbra and I seemed to be so right for each other, as far as ambition and business and identity and power. But it really takes work. My feeling about love is, that part of nature is so precious. I&amp;#039;ll always love her. That doesn&amp;#039;t mean I want to talk with her. It&amp;#039;s not women who are tough. It&amp;#039;s life. I live alone, and that simplifies a lot. Whenever I die, that will be when I die. What&amp;#039;s the big deal? I mean, if I just had some lentil soup, I&amp;#039;d rather not make a mess, but other than that, what&amp;#039;s the big deal? Why? I know why. How? I have term life insurance until I&amp;#039;m seventy-five. My friend says it&amp;#039;s like buying a lottery ticket. Well, I don&amp;#039;t want to buy a lottery ticket. I always feel bad afterward, because when I buy it, I think I&amp;#039;m going to win. I don&amp;#039;t buy not to win. Friendship? Groucho Marx, in his later days, used to let me shave him. He&amp;#039;d be fully dressed, in his beret, in his bedroom, standing up watching reruns of Burns and Allen and Jack Benny. And he would let me shave him with his electric razor. What did that mean? That was a form of affection, a form of feeling, a form of confidence and trust. The best friend I ever had \u2014 I don&amp;#039;t know that it&amp;#039;s a who. &amp;quot;What&amp;quot; would make more sense. Calm is a good friend of mine. I have persisted, but without a ballpark, without a game, without a team. We go on. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a6285/elliott-gould-1009/>