I gotta be involved. I still write ads; I still run around and rally the creative people.

There's something that goes on in a new-business meeting that's wonderful to watch. It's like showtime. There are people who are nervous, and there are people who are jittery, and there's so much drama and so much at stake.

Husbands and wives fight, and when the wife is packing up, the husband says, 'Don't leave! I'm gonna change!' Marriages stay together because people promise to change.

Sad to say, negative advertising really works.

The Democrats are going the way of Burma Shave and Crisco - products everyone loved and had in their homes. But they got old. They didn't have anything new to say about the product, and after awhile, they died.

Today's merger makers are not ad people; they're building communications companies.

My day is spent hiding from people.

Most of the people in advertising now - mention Bill Bernbach to them, they don't know.

I am a temporary amusement.

Humor works, and it's the best way to get attention without spending a lot of money.

Nobody can write a good 30-second commercial.

The French are simply incapable of telling the truth.

I think people are getting bored of parties, and hosts are terrified nobody's going to show up. So they have to start entertaining them before the party even starts.

No one wants to risk a million dollars on a few laughs. The big, flashy commercials are out. The soft sell is out.

I've never met a client who wants to be the worst.

People who are visiting Long Island find it's very beautiful, and they are quick to try Long Island foods, wines and other products.

If the FBI is now in charge of bad taste, we're all doomed.

Sometimes you have to scare people to save their lives. But I'm very much against it if you're trying to sell a product.

People don't generally like advertising that takes a stand.

It is now possible to target adverts to the right person at the right time in the right place. But that is not enough.

Money is being wasted on adverts that go right over a consumer's head. They may win awards at Cannes, but they lose at the cash register.

The Google model of targeted advertising is appealing because it claims to cut down on waste. We need to ask how that efficiency can be brought to creative process.

The Internet is king. Newspapers are dead or dying. Magazines are shrinking every day. Ad budgets are being cut. The bottom line is now the only line in advertising.

I'm a driver, and I love it.

There are no client conflicts, only bad explanations.

I don't remember most of the '60s and '70s.

Most account guys live with fear in their hearts.

The establishment can't change. It can't give people anything different; it can't make the turn.

In my world - advertising - the Super Bowl is judgment day. If politicians have Election Day and Hollywood has the Oscars, advertising has the Super Bowl.

My grandmother would start making her meat sauce at 7 in the morning on Sunday, and within five or six hours, that smell would be all through the house.

I think it's good to have switched to a much more visual world and that people are not all that interested in words.

I have very talented art directors in my agency who start out telling me, 'Well, this is what the picture is... ' I ask, 'Well, what's the headline?' and they say, 'We haven't done that yet, but it looks this way.' But I'm still writing copy, almost every day.

I always had more women working for me than men.

I came into the advertising business in 1952, at the age of sixteen, as a delivery boy for a stuffy, old-line advertising agency named Ruthruff and Ryan, which could have served as the setting for the 'Mad Men' television series without moving a desk.

By 1961, when I got my first copywriting job, 'my kind' were suddenly in demand. The creative revolution had begun. Advertising had turned into a business dominated by young, funny, Jewish copywriters and tough, sometimes violent, Greek and Italian art directors.

I once attended an advertising conference held at the Greenbrier Hotel in 1968. The dean of the original Mad Men, the great David Ogilvy, was the keynote speaker. The subject of his speech was the new creative revolution in advertising.

Whether you're a mafia guy or in advertising, you always end up going back to your family.

I only know two to three people that I grew up with in advertising in the 1960s who are married to the same women.

What I love about the Don Draper character is that he's so real and filled with all these contradictions.

There's an eternal war between a creative person and the business person.

'Mad Men' is celebrating a time that no longer exists.

My first marriage ended after 24 years.

I want to die at my desk.

I invented myself.

A computer is a wonderful thing, but it's cold, and what comes out of it is sort of cold.

You can't be impatient about growth, because that's what leads people to make mistakes.

With all my outside activities, I have to remind people I am really in advertising.

'Business Week' is guilty of very shoddy reporting.

Why do all our friends and relatives destroy the summer for us? Why can't they get married in February?

I don't come from a lot of money. In fact, I don't come from any money.