>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." >> we close the year by remembering some of the people we lost in 2013. they lead lives of purpose and consequence and enriched our culture through their inventions, art, and enterprise.

all of them left an impact on the world where we live. here is a look back at some of those conversations. >> it was clearly time to take care of the rest of life. we were moving to paris. >> that book was six years in the making. you move to paris and do what? >> do exactly what you had not been doing, pay attention to the rest of life and do not think about politics and don't worry about whose bill is up for a hearing today and whose sister is in trouble in idaho. >> what did you do there? did you write? >> i did not drink as good of wine. i drank a lot of wine, smoked

some good cigars. >> did you love france? >> i came to love paris. >> but you did not in the beginning? >> when you write a book as long as that one was, your interpersonal skills are gone. all of a sudden, i was talking to people i have never met in a language in which i had had no training. >> i think a good building enhances your existence, makes it better, makes you feel better about yourself, makes you understand what it is like to live well and to work well.

i believe in entitlement, not the usual ones, medicare and social security. i think we are entitled to the benefits we get in our cities. >> that is the single criticism of architecture in america. >> it is a criticism of this country in terms of its attitude, its willingness to invest in it, its lack of understanding of what it means. >> have your standards, your tastes, your appreciation changed? >> i think it has broadened. the art itself has grown broader and deeper. i am always learning something new. when i get discouraged because i see too many bad buildings, then

i see one that knocks me off my feet and it makes everything ok. >> jack was dominated by his father in the early stages. even when he was president. bobby is going to be attorney general. bobby did not want to be attorney general. jack did not want him to be attorney general. his father said in 1957, he said, jack is going to be president and bobby is going to be attorney general and teddy is going to be senator all at the same time. he was making that prediction come true. jack could not confront his father. he sent and clark clifford and he sent in george smathers to persuade his father not to insist on bobby. his father said, forget it, bobby is going to be attorney general. and bobby became attorney general. >> he went out in the middle of

the night and whispered, it is bobby, it is bobby. >> exactly. >> i have been back to vietnam several times. i interviewed the commander of the communist forces. a brilliant general, enemy though he was. when you were a reporter in vietnam, you would see these piles of enemy bodies. we called it the body count. if we killed enough of the enemy, it would break their morale. what happened was, you would kill 5000, and six months later, there would be another 5000 replacing them. it was not a war for territory,

it was a war to break the morale of the enemy. we never found the breaking point. they wore us down. the american public said enough already, let's get out of there. >> i tried to run for a fourth term and the people threw me out. when they wanted me to come back, i said, no. >> i do not remember this groundswell for you to come back. >> people had to choose between david dinkins and giuliani, they did not want that choice. >> they would have rather have you? >> people would say to me, you must run again. i would say no. people threw me out and now the people must be punished. >> you are half-serious. >> i came to washington with the

labels the right wing conservatives put on me. >> it rallied a lot of liberals around you because they thought you were carrying the battle that needed to be fought against some people who were opposed to you within the white house. >> the liberals expected, as did the conservatives, that when i wrote about aids, it would be a treatise of moral censure. it was dealing with sick people where they were. >> i believe that it was proof. it is very simple. they want to be independent. they are able to take care themselves and their families. people were slaves. they thought someone would take care of them.

the general secretary, the president, the state would take care of them. for the last 10 years, people are prepared to change. millions of people have changed the mentality. young people proved themselves that they are able to take care of themselves. >> there is always the specter. you just told us how putin wants

to take over the media. do you fear him? >> he is able to put them in jail. he is able to put in jail everyone he wants because the system in russia, it is so bad. if he thinks that it is rational for him to put them in jail, he will do it. >> can anyone seriously conceive of mrs. clinton or mrs. jones or mrs. stewart being indicted for trivial mistake of that kind on a real estate loan application to a bank that knew all about it? it is ridiculous. it does not need to be investigated. >> what do you think about

whitewater? >> i wrote a column the other day because i felt that the newspaper business had ignored this most serious, most thorough investigation of a good many of the charges against president and mrs. clinton. hundreds of pages, very detailed, each charge examined and rejected resoundingly. you would not know that from watching television or reading the newspapers because the results of the investigation has had 1/100 of the publicity of the great charges which turned out to be empty bags of wind.

>> there is a great thing of pablo picasso, by the time he reaches the age of 60, a man has learned everything he needs to learn about life. and it is too late. here i am, i have come all this way, i do believe there has been a sea change in my life. i sense there is a difference in the way people appreciate me now. i cannot tell you how grateful i am. >> has it made you happier? >> i have gained a deep level of confidence. i know who i am and i am ok with that. >> he made the album which became the genius ray charles and i watched him call out the

wrong notes. quincy jones was in the production room. it was an amazing moment for him because he understood orchestration. quincy always said, that is where i learned how to write for the big orchestra. he was the ultimate musician. the respect and the fear sometimes came out. fear because he could hear everything. i think he was the king of tempo. he would find something in a song that would become his. one of his favorite people with count basie, who could take a song and find the right tempo. ray absolutely could do it. when we got involved with this album, which is the last of the ray charles album, i watched everybody we worked with get inspired. when i say fear, it is highest respect you can give anybody is when you care about somebody.

>> when a movie is really working, we have an out of the body experience. this is not the psychic network. you are so wrapped up in the story that you really are not aware of where your car is parked, where you are going to have dinner. you only care about what will happen to those people next. when that happens, it gives us an empathy for other people on the screen that is more sharp and more effective and powerful than any other art form. i am somebody who loves to read. the movies do touch us more deeply. >> i was raised in a home in

which my mom fought for civil rights in the 1950s and my dad was a new immigrant from china and i grew up north of here in new york. i grew up thinking in politics, the right thing to do was to serve the poor. that seemed to me that that is what politics was about. through a long strange journey, i ended up being part of the religious right. >> in a cynical society, more and more distrust, more and more people are disaffected. what david is talking about, i do not believe it matters. nothing is going to get done. >> with all of the experience you have watching politics, what was surprising? >> maybe it is not a new revelation, but how difficult the system is to move and how anybody in public life should be where of the system our founders have set up to make it very difficult to make change in this complicated society. it was not set up so you cannot

make it operate. that is the difference. >> there has been a great trivialization of everything in our society. it makes it all the more important for a president to get anything done to focus on one or two things and keep coming back to it over and over. bill clinton's great strength is that he is a really superb communicator. and he has also very bright and he cannot help himself from talking about everything and dealing with everything. >> i love the play. i thought it was funny, short. >> you are looking for a short play? >> people came out of the

theater and they were alive, interested, laughing. there was a lot of energy. this is something i would like to be a part of. it was not a huge stretch for me. it is something -- little did i know that it was more difficult than i thought. this is something to come back to the theater with instead of some costume drama. >> how did the director influence the way you saw this? >> he knew it a lot better than i ever could have. he guided us along. he understands timing. >> he understands comedy. >> he said, you do not want them

to last here because it breaks the tension. >> i come from this very visceral point. i started to learn a lot. >> he would call anywhere from midnight to 3:00 in the morning, depending on what time zone he was in on the campaign. i would be asleep sometimes. it was a ritual. at some point, the phone would ring. i think i slept next to the phone. it would be john, the old man wants to talk to you. the candidate wants to speak to

you. richard nixon, that very familiar baritone voice, then the conversation would go along for 6, 7, 8 minutes. he was doing the talking. his voice would be mixed up. and it would sound as if he was going off the deep end. next morning, he was up bright. >> this was his way of going to sleep? >> years after the campaign, i said, what was that all about? he could not sleep, he was an insomniac. i would give him scotch.

and then he would have to talk. some type of monologue and that was his ritual. >> when i started covering the white house, the dues were $2.00 a year. when i started covering the white house, i could belong to the association but i could not go to the dinner. that was in 1961. in 1962, the women covering the white house said, president

kennedy should not attend the dinner if we cannot go. kennedy agreed. that is the first time we were able to go. can you believe it? we had to break down the doors of the national press building. all of these clubs. >> what is your great regret? >> you always want to monday morning quarterback every story. where was i? maybe i should have known more. i think you monday morning quarterback every story you do.

>> there were two areas in which i found great satisfaction. there were two in which i found not only satisfying, but loving and interesting. one was that i worked very hard on the history of the house. i was the chairman of the bicentennial committees in 1976 and 1987, 1989. >> everything is going to turn 200 someday.

>> i hope in the doing, that i could inspire the constitutional history. >> the most striking thing about the campaign, the republicans keep saying, bill clinton was elected with 43% of the vote. what is really striking is you have president george bush who had not committed any felonies and who was thought of as a nice man. and had run a very successful war. you had ross perot, who half the voters think was too mentally unstable to be president. and you have clinton, this hayseed from arkansas. those two guys got 62% of the

vote against an incumbent president. >> in this particular social situation, gets to be the way they celebrate the lives or the way they practice their lives. if you are doing it together, it reflects that most adequately the blues or jazz. jazz is a way of stomping the blues. >> jazz as a way of getting rid of the blues?

>> you confront the facts of life. they woke up and realized they were slaves. that is a fact. the question of survival. do you cut your throat or do you get yourself together enough to be ready to stomp at the savoy by 9:00 that night? >> i say that my style is the absence of style. and yet it is obvious. people say they can tell by reading a passage that i wrote it. when they read one of my books, they know it is my book. >> is that good? >> i think it is good. >> it has a certain style. >> it has a certain sound. whether it is a zing.

i think of style as sound. my attitude towards letting the characters tell the story. >> the idea came from a client of mine. i had changed jobs twice because they were paying a man 50% more than they were paying me. when you are earning $13,000 and the guy next to me was making 19 or 20, that is quality of life. as i started to do business, i was a research analyst, and when i started to bring in institutions, i was not being paid. i was making a lot of money then, that was back in 1967. where can i go where i can get

credit for the business i do? what big firm can i go to? and he said to me, do not be ridiculous. work for yourself. i told him, don't you be ridiculous. he said, i do not think there is a law against it. i took the constitution of the new york stock exchange home and i studied it. it took a little while because i had problems getting sponsored. i knew people, that when i asked them to sponsor me, they were running out of the door. people like things the status quo. >> after my dad bought my first guitar when i was 11, i started traveling on the city buses and i paid my three cents -- that is what it was back then. they got to know me so well that

it did not cost me anymore. i was able to ride for free. i could go back to the back of the bus and i would sing up a storm. i would get downtown and i would bug the people on the streets. i was down at the penny arcade in beaumont. it was a sunday. there is nobody downtown on a sunday. i got up on the shoeshine stand, the fellow was there shining shoes. i was playing and singing and all of a sudden, one or two people come by, three or four getting out of church or a movie. they would stop and listen for a minute.

all of a sudden, people started throwing nickels and dimes and quarters and pennies and a dollar bill or two. when it was all over with, i had $24. i had never seen that much money in my life. i went crazy. the arcade was right behind me. i had a ball. that is what happened to me a lot. >> what ever happened to the money? early on, you found out that you could earn your way by singing. >> it grew into a religion for me, country music. i loved it so much. when i knew that people like to

hear me as much as i like to sing to them, i could make a living at this. >> did you know what you had? johnny cash said, people ask me who is my favorite country artist and i say, beside george jones? is that what it is, the sound that you have? >> some of us are blessed in this business with a little different sound in our vocal cords. if you have that little bit of soul and you put it all together, everybody in music, especially the fans, they look

for that one thing different in an artist. luckily, i guess i had it. i have been a lucky man. >> when i was a youngster going to school, most of the wisdom was handed on to you in proverbial form. one of the things your elders would say to you was the pen is a lot lighter than the spade. i wrote a poem called "digging." the shift from being a farmer's son to the scholarship boy to being the poet with his first volume published. i went on to write poems about archaeological findings and so

on. it is quite a natural image. >> writing the best poetry you can, what is that about? >> redemption. for someone who is a writer, there is a sense of self- justification, the sense of having made something of it is dependent upon the mysterious verification that comes with the sounds and words being put in the right order. you have advanced yourself a bit to arrive where you were already. there is a curious experience, it carries you out with a series

of yes, yes, yes. i think it is to do with wholeness and the sense that all that is possible has nearly got done. ♪

>> asking yourself who you are, that is a metaphysical question i do not feel like discussing today. >> you are comfortable with who you are? >> more or less. >> help me understand what you mean. >> i never want to be completely satisfied. satisfaction is the enemy of progress.

>> where does it all come from? is it reading, conversation? >> i talk with people, we kick ideas around. >> you are constantly in search of -- >> i have a friend who just retired from the fbi. i called down there to talk to him once. you know what the boss says about you? he's a sponge. i am a sponge, i am always at work, i am always absorbing information. for the most part, the people i write about, they are doing the same thing. they are people who prefer order

to chaos. people who try to do the right thing. >> i love the idea and excitement of going. i have never been bored with the idea of going. of course, many films are boring. >> is it any different than any other art form, there are few really good ones? >> there are more good films than there are good plays. if i would make of a list of the films i like, it would far outnumber the number of novels i would like in that period of time. >> you have seen more films than novels you like? >> yes. i have been very fortunate. a lot of fine films have been made in my time.

>> a lot of good artists working at the time you are writing. what is about the film as an art form that you like so much? >> surprise and familiarity. the sense of being embraced by something i have known for a long time very well and the knowledge that it may contain something pleasantly novel, something expanded. i am not talking about thrills or plot twists, but extended knowledge of my own experience. film is a meretricious form. it is so easily powerful. there is a tremendous

imaginative tickle that everyone gets from film. >> since the time i was a little kid, i was very blonde when i was tiny. god was very kind to me, took my hair away when i was 30. for every 500,000 cubans that look more typically latino, they throw one or two in to check out everybody and find out what is going on on the other side. both my parents were more typically latino looking. i have an older brother and i guess we were both the results

of a recessive gene. i had an irish great-great- grandfather. it came down to me and it was confusing because in my household, we were very cuban. when i went outside in the world, i had to relate to a latino community that did not relate to me that way. constantly eavesdropping about, i encountered so many negative attitudes growing up. it would be nice to get out of your own skin. that ends up leading to a creative way of looking at the world. when you become a writer, you have a lot of questions you want to ask. you are looking for answers. my own experience of feeling of wanting to fit in and not quite

fitting in, you are always searching for answers. the only way you can find those answers are asking certain questions. >> one of the reasons the public has been somewhat discouraged is politicians in both parties have promised too much. things that government cannot easily do were promised to be done. we will bring the economy back. doing things that require fundamental changes in social attitudes and the culture of a country. it is not unnatural that when people see these problems continuing, despite the efforts of many to deal with them, are somewhat impatient. there has been a misconception about washington is like, and in the case of the congress, what congress is like. i was shocked to hear a focus

group in texas, a young worker was asked, what would it be like to have dinner with your congressman. he said i would be picked up in a huge limousine and driven to a huge mansion and waited on by servants and given food i have never seen before. that is the vision -- it is as wrong as some type of space novel. most members of congress live very ordinary lives and work very hard and it is not at all the gilded life that young man had in his mind. >> it is difficult to ask these questions in the context of an auction room. like so many slaves being auctioned off and your question

was, how much am i paying for this stuff? without, for a moment, believing the possibility that intelligent people are interested in it because the art itself is intelligent work made by intelligent people. >> i went because it was very big and it had a lot of different schools. i had always been writing and i was always playing in bars and in bands since i was 14. i thought i would go into

journalism. ok? be sitting where you are. i went to journalism school and they were teaching me the first week, the triangular paragraph. a little information, a little bit more information and no opinion. that was it for me in journalism school. it had not formalized in my mind, but that kind of journalism was not for me. if i had more gumption, i would have wanted to be in a drama school. as it was, i took film and i took directing, but i never had the gumption to take acting, which is what i really wanted to do. >> why not? >> i did not think i could do it.

i thought i was better off as a director. i did a play, the automobile graveyard. >> was your first big moment as a musician? >> that is interesting. big moment as a musician? playing with the velvet. the cohesiveness of writing songs and having them come to life like that. charlie, seriously, i was not a singer. i was not upfront. i was way in the back. on the guitar playing my three or four chords. you would just play the top 20. they were just about the same. there was the lead singer, which was not me.

we formed the velvet underground, i had some songs. we would get together. if you wrote it, you are the one who sang it. i think that is the way it worked. >> in retrospect, first of all, i muddled through by working very hard. in retrospect, what i did was assume that if everybody was doing it one way, there had to be a better way. around that, we would build a culture where failing was allowed and nothing bad happened so that the desire to do differently and we work harder than anybody else. no matter how right or wrong we

were, we could outwork the other fellow. we were very clear about what we wanted to accomplish. we wanted to be the best car insurance company that ever existed. we set a standard of integrity, a standard of openness, a standard of self-revelation and examination that attracted very good people. that is how we did it. >> do you have a philosophy of giving all of this money you made away? >> not exactly. the money i have is a function of the great american capitalist system. i would've done the same work with the same ability in the

same effort for a lot less money, but it happened the way it happened. getting to this point and having this money, one has to think about, you have to give it away or the government takes two thirds when i die. i have a right to have fun with it. >> we were a microcosm of power in new york city. we constructed it to be an antidote to "the new york times" because "the new york times" was so dominant at the time i came to the paper and nobody was saying, wait a minute, it is a great newspaper, but there were a lot of smart writers. the "new york observer" was meant to diagnose power in new york. it was meant to be tremendous

fun and reminiscent of what newspapers could be. >> why did you leave? >> i thought i had driven the car as far as it could go. i wanted to learn something new. i want to learn something new. i have an evangelical mission to save the part of the print media that i love, which is, to me, sophisticated, arcane, a little bit of throwback to the 1920s, it's also a 21st century medium that the internet was a direct assault on. >> there is nothing as inspired as to know that the ideas for

which i have sacrificed will triumph. one of the things i am aware of 24 hours a day the ideas of liberation were much alive. the international community, irrespective of the government in power, whether it was liberal or conservative, that was a source of tremendous inspiration and kept morale of all of us very high. therefore, we were very strengthened because of the knowledge because it was not in vain and the possibility of us coming back to play our part of

the freedom fighters was always possible. this sustains us. to share these experiences was a tremendous experience. >> i was asked once what i would like as my epitaph. in the 1960s, i had this

terrible old jacket which i loved. one of those rags you never want to part with. it had been covered with mud and blood. i still chuckle. it distresses us to return work which is not perfect. i want that on my tombstone, please. another thing about the theater, of all of the art and crafts, it

is a fair reflection, the art of the moment. when we have gone, it is gone. carving statues of snow. >> if this would be your last day before you went to your great reward, what would you regret not doing? >> i have never thought about that and i cannot give you a good answer. i know where i would like to be. i would like a daughter and a son and a glass of whiskey. >> longevity has its rewards. >> it does indeed. the past is not passed.

the present is uncertain. the future does not exist. >> you were rather rebellious as a young man. you were not very religious. >> not at all. >> was going to moscow. i just happen to notice them. what is that? he said that is the daily portion of talmud. there must be something about this religion that keeps people

together. i finally decided that i would start to read the bible. i read it with commentaries. i found it immensely fascinating. ♪

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♪ >> live from pier three in san francisco, welcome to the late edition of bloomberg west where we cover the technology and media companies that are reshaping our world. our focus is on innovation, technology, and the future of business. let's get straight to the rundown. to facebook users file a lawsuit against the social network saying it's scanning private messages to better target advertising. facebook calls the lawsuit without merit. hackers expose the names and numbers of millions of snap chap users after a security form says it's warned him about von