. >> rose: welcome to the program, as 2015 comes to an en, we remember some of the people we lost this year. >> i'm hoping that when they do play that last song for me, that there will be peace, maybe it can be more peaceful. >> i think what i have done is to write against running time. >> i learned a great deal about life from him. and i learned an awful lot about football. >> my heart and soul, it's about reality. it's looking at this amazing world that we live in. and finding those things that you couldn't even imagine. >> he had the country's attention. and he had everybody's hopes i think with him. >> the people i make my imaginary read certificate someone that really wants to know, something about what is the best that's happening in movies. what's happening in art. and as somebody who again doesn't have a get-- isn't

someone without thinks in terms of magazines as being gay or straight or black or white or men or women or old or young. just someone who wants to know about the contemporary world. >> rose: an appreciation of those we lost in 2015 when we continue. nunds for charlie rose is provided by the following: and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. >> from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: these women and men lead important lives. they enriched society through their passion, their art and their enterprise. over the last 24 years they came

to this program for conversation. here's a look back at those moments. >> they didn't ask for much except the opportunity to make it. but my father, ironically, who was a ditch digger, had more important than a lot of people in new york city today who are educated. he had a job. he was only a ditch digger, but there was a ditch to be dug. and somebody handed him a shovel and said go to it, and he worked. for the most fundamental things you can give people is an opportunity to earn their own bread. with dignity and with a chance to move up. that, my father had. it's kind of ironic. he didn't have much else. but you gave him the chance to make it on his own. we're not doing that for people now. >> rose: but the quarrel seems to be how do you best do that. >> oh, yeah. i think one of the worst things you can do in trying to provide the answer to that question is to use all the magic language of

the politician. i think what you want to do is address the question with common sense and baby talk. and you know who is brilliant at that is abraham lincoln. he told you what the role of government was. >> rose: your hero. >> mine, yours, everybody that had the opportunity to know him would have to love him. although the voters didn't love him which is an interesting reminder too. but lincoln described it as well as he could describe it he said look, you're trying to figure out what government should do. government should do the things for you that you can't do for yourself, privately, individually. if you need to come together and pool your money and your energy to get it done, then we'll call that government. >> you can all look back, every one of us are moments in your own life when you made a decision or something didn't work out and if i had won that contest in high school, i might have been on broadway. i got $2,000 for signing with the pitsz berg pirates, mike mantel got 1100 the year before. i got $2,000.

>> whatever happened to him. >> i got $2,000. they gave me for the second year a contract in waco, texas, a class b team, the same wacko. >> pirates organization. >> pirates, yeah. i never went back. >> did it ever occur to me if that i had gone back i could have been major. >> there was no reason for you to go back. >> so many good things have happened in my life. many, many more than i deserve. that i am not capable of feeling regret in the sense that gee willikers, i feel bad, i didn't get that. i have gotten much more than i deserve, everywhere you can get it. >> charlie, it's a standard and basic theory. i happen to like the past game a little more, i think. and each club, and you see buffalo do this. there we go, you have got to the start of the game, if you don't get your running going, you are not going to be able to pass. >> any novelist of my generation learned a great deal from hemmingway. as far as big scenes geese.

i think what i go for is simple. a simple questions and simple questions are often large questions. as far as big themes go, i try to make it, i try to write well rather than badly. i try to make it interesting rather than boring. >> you try to tell a good story. >> exactly. >> what do you think you do best, because clearly it is your command of language that critics seem to notice a lot and seems to be compelled by. is that what you think it is that you do best? >> well, what i try to do is to put fairly complicated and intense psychological states into language. there is a difference between what we're experiencing and its expression in language. i mean i think a lot about intense areas of the human condition.

and i try to put them in language that is clear and plain. >> i really did enjoy teaching of practices more than anything. and i enjoyed a tough ballgame where it's going to be a contest. i hated those games where the players, the fans, everybody thought we should win by 20. and i knew the other team was dangerous. but the joy also was the relationships that you had with the guys. in college you change each year. and like bill fits, he went from the celtics to houston and our philosophy was to play hard, play hard shall smart and play together. and then have fun. we don't talk about winning. it is a byproduct if you play hard and play smart and play together. >> . >> if a year later we can't laugh about a bit, there is no

point in surviving. it would be in very poor taste. >> yes t would. but how would it do different. >> i don't think an experience. i don't think i've changed much. >> does your wife think you've changed. >> not really. >> unfortunately she says he didn't change. >> you know, you go into this business because it's something about a big story that is more exciting than anything else. and sometimes a big story is a war and sometimes it's not. i still want to be where the big story is. >> do you want to be in the middle east? >> sure. >> journalism is a very sort of blunt technology. and it goes with certain narrative and if i say you know, as an-- i got, as an addict a soashed up, got to see my

children, sur vieched cancer, even got a great job, that's one-story. and that's the story i like to tell. but there's another story about somebody who was a full on maniac, sewed ruin in everyone's lives who he came into contact with, created enormous collateral damage. in either through luck or pluck made it away from that. and both those stories are equally true, i think there's one that makes a little better media narrative and-- . >> rose: it's the second. >> it's about a thug who works "the new york times." that's a pretty good piece of analysis. i would write that story. >> i'm sure you would. >> i probably have. >> yes, you have. >> i've always disliked using the word success. >> rose: right. >> it's a dangerous word. and all of my business life, i think maybe because i was born on a farm.

you never think your crop is going to come in. >> . >> rose: and depending on the climate it might not. >> so i avoided the word success in business. i never allowed us to use it and built into the virus of success, charlie, whether a successful person or company, or a successful country, are a couple of viruses. they are just drilled into the dna of success. and one of the viruses is arrogance. and the other is complacency. and it can just explode on a perchlt i mean you walk into the restaurant and the minute you know whether or not they are arrogant. >> right. >> you are lucky to be able to come in here. and certain companies take on that attitude. an example when we decided we prnlt infallible. >> what was the-- in the end. >> the simple fact is that coca

cola was more than a drink for people. i will give you an example. we had to bring in a hundred people to answer phone calls. and i grew up in-- got a call one day for a lady in a rest room. i think it was covina, california. a cute little old lady. she was kind of crying. i said honey, what is the matter. she said you're taking away coca cola. and i said honey, when is the last time you drink a coca cola. she said oh, i don't know, 20, 25 years ago. i said well, why are you upset. and she said because you are playing around with my youth. >> i wasn't spock to begin with. i was impassioned and i was taught to be emotional as an acker. i learned to express emotion, not to repress it or suppress it. so it was against the grain that

i was working, that i was held by directors to find the way. the first time i said fascinatek, i said it wrong. there was something happening in the dramatic scene and i, as spock said fascinating. and the director said no, cool it out. do the scientific curious approach to it. i said oh, interesting. i will lose this moment here because i should be part of the scene. i didn't realize that i would establish a very clear identity for myself. as soon as saying fascinating. >> for political are you much more better for me to stay-- than to be elected governor. >> i was elected three times. >> rose: exactly. >> really. >> you had a good record out there. >> but i have so big experience in the regional level and federal level that i don't think that i made a very big mistake.

>> it really is a craft, a very important craft to make people, if somebody has a nice neck tie they like or a nice dress that they're wearing, it just makes you feel better to look attractive. and that's what the fashion business is. it's really a business of temptation. now american fashion probably is the best example of temptation. because they are producing so many different things and they are trying their best to seduce american women into buying beautiful clothes. and there's nong wrong with that, because it makes you feel better as i said before. but american fashion takes from other sources like, and turns it into something that everybody can understand. >> you don't think of yourself as a businessman as much as you think of yourself as a newspaper man, as a reporter. >> absolutely. i try to, when i go out i try not to miss a trick. but i missed several. >> be warned that john fairchild, if you tell him, it's fair game. >> that's true. that is the job of a reporter,

you have to watch everything. but it's fun to do interviews and talk to people because team are generally all good and they're interesting. but when you let them talk, what they say is much more interesting than anything you write than the things you write about them. if you talk long enough, all people are interesting and fun to write about. >> almost everything i do whether it's an office building, museum always has a domestic sense to it that you and i can say to each other like this, talk to each other whether its at the dinner table or whatever it is. >> but there is this kind of face to face seat of the pants way of understanding the way human bodies work in a room and the way people con vers and the-- of a place. all of that translates into a building that's japanese. in fact, i like to call humanist. and my clients say that that is certainly 1/16 century idea.

but the idea that the body and we become the center of the-- of our own little universe as we make rooms and collections of rooms. >> i want to make sure that this place always commands confidence. confidence, investment and brings in talent. within investment and talent we will prosper. that confidence should never be jeopardized by riots, civil commotion, strife of any kind. >> strife of any kind. >> yeah. it's not necessary. >> you can't go there. >> yeah. >> do you wish you had a bigger fish bowl to achieve your miracle in? this is a small island. >> it's 40 minutes from one end to the other. >> it is very difficult sto vay

little piece of beauty. >> what is it that makes you this tragic thinker that people come to for advice? >> first, i do not believe people come to me to seek advice. they come to me to bounce ideas, to test them out. >> but what is it you have? >> experience. i'm 88. i have lived long. and i've not forgot enmy mistakes. >> the mystery of suffering remains a regular mystery of life. but also the presence of sin, of offense, of injustice, of hatred also-- and with these things are

sins. they represent a mystery but we have in jesus the mystery of infancy, of life renewed, and hope restored. eyes widened with wonder. people sing. and we have the mystery of inequity. herod seeks to kill him and does kill-- that is what the gospel record says, and we have the mystery of god's invasion. that god in clies has come among us. and has made common cause with the brokenness of our humanity. this is what is healing about it. >> the need for action as long as there is discrimination that continues, and affirmative action is a way, it's a method of ending exclusion. so let's take a truck driving company, a trucking company that hires drivers. suppose they hire 30 a year.

and suppose they never hired anybody but white men. and what should they do? if they want to end the monopoly of white men in that kind of a business, and they should, the only thing they can do is start a program to try to find competent tent people, women, african-americans, and others, and see if they can try them out. >> they were ready in april of 1987 for public relief. and relief there came not. and i was waiting. >> i mean i was doing my book on watergate then and i was anxious to have it. and they told me that when nixon has requested a re-review of the

whole thing. i said a re-review. how long will that take. they said i don't know. i said another ten years. well, we've-- finally after five years, it became clear there was nothing going to happen as long as richard nixon was around. so we filed suit. we meaning myself and public citizen, public interest law firm. we filed suit on this in -9d 2ee. seud the national archives which after all had custody of it. but richard nixon intervened in the case. he is called intervenor. so we are joined at the hip, in that they say immore tallized, entombed forever in the mud elf a case. any how, intervened and the flow of legal papers started until his death in 19194 i will interject at this poind and say i'm convinced richard nixon-- richard nixon could live another hundred years we have fought with every tool and resource in his command. he just didn't want to deal with these again in his lifetime.

>> i think what i have done is to write against the running time. >> rose: write against the running time. >> yeah. >> rose: meaning? >> the present time is really quick. and alwaysed feeling to forget to go back, to see-- in all of my books i have the present time inside but it's always looking back as a relation between-- because that was one of my lessons i got that are you not able to do anything in future if you have no knowledge of the pasttime. and you cannot understand the present time without this knowledge of the pasttime. >> rose: of the past. >> yeah. >> i've always been interested in luxury goods. the way they're made. the way people buy them.

names are very important in retailing. >> rose: brand names. >> very important in life but retailing they're most important. and i have always, i always tried to present goods to people the way it was easiest for them to buy it. that's responsibility of the developer. to make every store an opportunity for the customer. >> that was your big idea. >> yes. >> that was it. >> why did you want to get in the auction business? >> well, it was brought to me and i have always been, whenever i see an opportunity if i'm excited by it, i like to get involved. and i saw this-- i dealt there several times. i bought things at auction. so i knew a little about it. but when i got involved in it i saw a business that was a

wholesale business. and i believed i could make it into a retail business. and that was a big change. >> by doing what? >> by making it easier, more convenient, more exciting, more opportunity statistics for the customer. >> the same thing you have done with the malls. >> absolutely, the same thing. the same thing, we have changed the art world by doing that. >> we started in 1923. any film practically from then until now. so what did we do? >>-- made up a list of a hundred, i made up a list of a hundred without looking at them. and we had different organizing principles. mine was to create a party where a lot of different people would come in so not just my favorite american films but i looked through, i went, ransacked my love for ingmar bergman and there was bergman. and i love hong kong movies and there are one or two of those.

and i love indian musical melo dramas. so des pietd-- there are a couple of those. >> talking about the old films that we thought so much about where we were coming up with this list. no matter how fansful they are, they are documents of the people who were alive in that beufl, at that time, everybody, everything that happened happened before the camera. there was no fooling around. didn't go back and fix it. >> and that's what drives me. you know, i would have been driven even without cancer but it drives me more that i have had it beus the money, and it really doesn't matter. what really matters is if you can do the work of your life. so i bust my butt every day to get to the work of my life. and i'm so thankful that i can continue to do it. it makes me a better writer.

this is my third novel and i think it's probably the best novel i've written. and maybe the fourth one will be even better. it used to be as much of a atmosphere as the oxygen we breathe in that chamber. mr. raven used to tell us like the greatest a seft a legislature and. >> without being-- you destroy the argument of one's adversary but not to destroy the person. the same assumption of honor and integrity and sin certificatity that we would like for those people to have afford to us. that was the order of the day when i went to congress. it was kind of an 11th commandment, thou shall not

demagogue against thy party. today i signed-- there is a tennessee to demonize, scandalize to question the patriotism of one's political opposition. there are certain things one could say. for example, most analysts, i think this would include you, certainly would include me. i never practiced but i'm trained to be an analyst also. would argue that these metaphysical entities, the great giants, life against death, which he does talk about, meta physical units which we do not really need. a and that below that is something, aggressiveness and sexuality, very much much more complicated, that these make perfect sense to me. >> when they play the last song

for bb, as he's going to meet his maker, what do you want to hear? >> peace in the world peace in the world. >> a song we do now called peace to the world, rather, peace to the world. and i'm hoping that when they do play that last song for me there will be peace in the world. i dowtd it but maybe it can be more peaceful. >> when i first came to new york i used to wander around central park and just take pictures. >> rose: what kind of camera. >> then a leica. >> rose: today. >> now i use all different kinds of cameras. i use hassleblat. i have canons and leicas and 4x5s. >> it's love for it's up to the people of iraq to decide who their leader should be. it's not up to the state department, or the white house or the pentagon to decide on that. we have been seeing and reading

this nonsense for six or seven years and president sad-- the president saddam is supported by his people, trusted by his people and he will remain until god decides and the people of iraq decide. not the american government. >> i was surprised over the weekend to see on american weekend news and public affairs program which you appeared on or witnessed, the notion of people saying almost saying i wish someone would do something about not iraq saddam hussein. >> in other words, people were appearing on public programs. >> here. >> yes, in the united states. >> yeah, they want to dictate thns they want to see him eliminated. that sentiments was reflected. >> that moral? is that ethical. >> rose: no. >> so is this. >> you understand that though, do you see that, that there is such a kind of revulsion.

>> in the united states. >> the establishment here in the united states but the establishment in the united states, charlie, does not decide the fate of iraq. does not choose the leader of iraq. saddam hussein was not-- by the american forces to the leadership of iraq. he came to the leadership of iraq by his own views and ways with the support of the iraqi people, with the support of the iraqi army. and nobody is going to change that because pl so in so in the united saits-- doesn't like saddam hussein. >> i suppose it was lat ent, in me, it was something i wanted the thing s you know, that life is all in the present. living entirely in the present. yes, and i, there was something within me that wanted

too-- these days were just being heaped up, so to speak and vanishing in a way. and i guess it was some sort of deep urging to make something out of this level of days. something, you know, something lasting. and i suppose that's what compelled me to write. >> i was asked to do this, which initially one of the directors at the american film institute which is a film school in los angeles asked me to do this film. and i initially turned him down. and he begged and i didn't know the first thing about filming. and i agreed to do it. and right from the first moment, just fell in love with writing for film. i found my vehicle. >> what? >> i think it, for the first

time i felt that the music was supporting something bigger than the music, it had a profound affect on an audience than just sitting in a dark room listening to an orchestra play. it was music, i was writing the music, having it performed which is a rarity. i mean that is like going back to the days of-- moz ard. >> it is very good in a democracy. >> that when there are frustrated and resentful people, that you have a candidate that you get those issues out on the table. that is why i have felt all along that affirmative action ought to be debated in our election. because it is when you don't debate these kind of issues, and frustrations that you get a very angry mood in a democracy. >> i've been winning most of the time.

i have won most of the time and i continue now to win. so but you have to take chances. i take chances all the time. i try different things all the time because i want to do them, you know. and i do what i feel like doing. when i want broadway shows, that was very risky business. and i did them. >> we have two aces in the-- to work for us and i hate to use again a sim lee in this, it is a family that has its-- in the ground, that works for the interest of the people, that has the judgement to know if a bad decision is made to go back and correct it. that will move with the people for the people and not in spite of the people.

and the other aspect of that is the fate of the saudi citizens in their religion which will be the binding fce that allows this great transformation to happen in the country and keep the social cohesion of the country together, and the unity of the country together. >> in the 70s i was a ledge student. i have never seen, i didn't see anything like the level of tor tune-- torture which is happening now. people being pet ro bombed. people, pet roll being poured on their bodies and set a light. and even the mayor elect's wife has been begged to, you know, and shot, you know, after total brutalization. so that didn't happen during the colonial period.

this is unprecedented. so we just-- and people are talking about a government of unity. mgabe is not a man who will share power with anybody. >> i do think that way, books begin for me with as i said, an image or a sound. >> i'm really interested in making a magazine for people that want to know what's happening. >> so you just want, other than their curiosity about-- a typical reader in my mind, a magazine, the people i make my imaginary reader is someone that really wants to know something about what is the best that is happening in movies, what is happening in art, and is somebody who again doesn't have a geto mind, you know. isn't someone who thinks in

terms of magazines as being gay or straight or black or white or men or women or old or young. just someone who wants to know about the contemporary world. >> well, if you come and you order a dress, i will make sure that that dress is great for you, and you don't see yourself coming and going at every place that you go. we do something very special. as i say, we do what they do in europe. which is unique clothing for the individual. >> if i had a lot of pull and knew something about fashion, and i said what is the signature, would they say color, would they say cut, fabric. >> i think i don't know glamor. i mean i like a pow kind of clothes. a woman who wears the dress to be noticed. i don't want her to wonder in like a wall flower. >> the best thing that ever happened to me goes back to a very unlombardi like thing.

and i am in the locker room, before the press came in, with my dad, he's sitting there. and he was shouting. and i was too. and i was trying to hold back some tears. because when you go through a long season, you are beat up. and you are the one who lost the football game, you lost it for everybody. virchtion lombardi came up and put his arm around me. and he said don't feel bad about it, frank. we wouldn't have been here without you. and that's not the lombardi you read about and here about but that is what he was all about. >> i'm generally an optimist. i think if you look over the longer run, i agree with a lot of what he said about improvements. over the longer run, particularly 50 years, the different in race relations in this country today and 50 years ago is literally night and day. there is just no comparison. opportunity, advantage, uplift, all of this is here that wasn't there before. if you live over the short term, the last ten or 15 years you're looking at a downward spiral. and it doesn't matter how many

statistics you can quote about how much money is spent on this and that. president reagan if not a deliberate racist was certainly a benign racist. president bush has come ported himself in a racist manner. i saw eleanor holmes earlier with a united states senator who said for five minutes we've got to talk about this program and never once mentioned the word race. never once mentioned black and white. just said we've got to talk about it we've got to do much more than talk about it. >> i want to describe lives which have been influenced by some overwhelming problem or-- like color blindness or autism, but to expand it into a full biography, that involves my spending time with a person and seeing them in real life, their homes. >> you came from a family of doctors, yes? >> yes. >> rose: your brothers are doctors. >> yes. >> rose: your mother and father were involved in medicine. >> yes. >> rose: when did you develop

the interest that you have in neurology, neurosciences. >> well, i think in a way it was very, very early. and both my parents trained in neurology, although they didn't practice it. and that is the bravest, the most incredible thing in the universe. and i think i probably knew from 12 or 14 that was it. >> rose: was there a moment, an event, was there a thing. was there a time that happened for you? an epiphany. >> there were a lot of epiphanies. no, it merged. >> rose: what areas of exploration. brain are the most fascinating to you? >> i think increasingly it has to do with consciousness. i have looked at sort of perception and movement for years but now i'm interested in language and consciousness. and what makes us a person. the basis of being charlie rose, because your brain is you in a

way in which your heart isn't. you have a heart transplant or a brain transplant. >> i need one though. >> but go ahead. >> the way in which the brain embodies the self, in doing so, from the length of it, and i think this is the exciting thing. >> what i think is you are dealing with fear. basically you are dealing with fear and you have to get through to those fears. and in that way you have to know what people are really afraid of these days as opposed to even ten years ago, you know? and then you have to cross the line so that you can elucidate those fears in a way. put them into a film in a way that goes beyond necessarily good taste or what is proper about what the-- feels comfortable allowing you to do. you have to go into those areas. >> people often ask me, why do people want to go. and people don't want to go,

they are scared. we have fear in real things. that is not real life, you know. so the reason i think this works for kids is that they fears are evoked and brought in the course of a story that has some resolution at the end. >> when we ask why aren't muslim nations more prosperous, they point to western policies as the reason. westerners say well, it has to do with corruption in government, other factors, lack of education. and muslim public tend to be much more critical of the west, much more critical of christians and especially jews and vice versa. in the united states. >> okay, but why? >> well, i think it has to do with a difference in values which are juks ta posed with each other in this modern communications world. there is certainly a difference, there are differences over

policy, support for israel when it comes to the united states. the war in iraq when it comes to the united states. the war on terrorism more broadly when it comes to the united states. >> there is always a to underestimated national-- we didn't understand it in the case of france, during the war, 1944 when the u.s. came prepared with its own administration, and were quietd surprised to find the french had their own ideas about who should go. >> this was in 44ee. >> we made the same mistake it seems to me in vietnam, obviously in cuba. and i think we have made exactly the same mistake again in iraq. we thought that just because we were getting rid of saddam they would be grateful. and we find that they don't like being occupied. there is a very strong nalt feeling even in a nation which is rather problematic given its

pases and its divisions. but they do not like a prolonged occupation. >> i think the yankees, i think who i prayed-- i didn't care who i played for as long as i got to play ball. >> what makes the difference between a guy using the language that was in the bull durham who makes it to the show and a guy who doesn't? what is the difference? is it talent? is it will? is it. >> it is a lot of work. you know, i was a lousy catcher. >> rose: you couldn't catch. >> no. i never caught-- i was a third baseman but they thought hi a pretty good arm, the yankees. and they made me a catcher. and my first year-- . >> rose: if you had to do over rather be a catcher because you are in on every play.

>> yeah, it's fun. you're in the game. and you get to talk to everybody. outfield are you kind of lonely. i don't know i say them. i just go to parties and people say, let me hear you say one of your funny things. i don't know i say them, it just comes out. you know, like you tell me what time it is and i will say now. nobody goes there, it's too crowded. what's your favorite? well, i guess it ain't over till it's over, i said that in 73ee. you come to the fork in the road, take it. you can't hilt and think at the same time. >> rose: go ahead, are you doing very well. >> what are some of the others. i will still be asleep if you didn't wake me. >> rose: nobody goes to that restaurant any more because it's too crowded. it gets dark early out here.

charlie, i think in one way you can say what, it has got a broad appeal. it is a simple story with a good conclusion. and they are in a bizarre. >> rose: good guys win, bad guys lose. >> everyone likes a story like that. >> am i at my highest and best use. i got a lot of things. i got a chance to serve my country, i was a fellow prosecutor in my 20s, watergate, senate, made a few movies, traveled around the world a lot of times. visited foreign leaders and all. but i stepped up a time or two. and i think that it is time i stepped up again. at a time when i can do it freely and openly and be myself and do things my way. just basically say this. this is a guy i am, i've always been. i've been on the public stage

since i was 30 years of age. and what you see is what you get. i'm concerned about my country. >> i am seen to be by some people to be a very close to the united states. >> rose: a tool of the united states. >> yes, well, and some people in the united states. >> rose: an american creation. >> they should be comfortable with that and observe the meetings we have. the delegations we receive and the way that people have talked to me and i have received me. the whole, this whole issue of being an american creation is so far from the mark, of anyone who comes and observes the situation on the ground. >> i'm glad to say that due to the aftermath of katrina, i thought for many wonderful acts of kindness, generosity, from every level, from the top to the

average person on the street, i'm just overwhelmed by the generosity and the heartfelt spirit i've seen from so many, many people. the scale that katrina left us with, the good is yowtd weighing the bad by a long shot. there are a lot of wonderful things going on. especially due to katrina, i've been able to see them come to life. for one thing, even though this may sound a little personal, but when i first got here, i was on a radio program and i was saying the things i lost. and later on that afternoon, steinway called me at my-- they got my number from somewhere, i guess. my friend josh, and called me and said you will have a steinway as long as you need one. things like that happened. there were people on the street bringing gifts to certain trucks

right down on broadway. sending things down to the people in new orleans. >> what do you most want to be remembered for? >> to be honest, i have never given any thought to that. >> rose: not a moment. >> no, no, no. i try to do what i thought was my-- to do my duty. and it is not to serve t is the great problem as to understand what is my duty. sometimes you have conflicting duties. and you have to find out what is my first duty. and what is my second and third one. and what is my duty but not that important as this one. this is the real problem. >> rose: and how did you define your duty when were you chancellor? >> i was listening to friends

and deliberators inside my country, outside my country. but in the end you have to make up your own mind, to listen to advice, you get conflicting advice, of course. and therefore in the end you have to make up your own mind. but normally, i would not have acted out of instinct, but only after collecting advice. >> i think number one, the progress we've made in creating and helping to build a peaceful united democratic europe for the first time in history through enlarging nato, the new democracy to the east and by building a relationship with a democratic russia, i think will have lasting and enduring importance. number two, i think that putting our relationship with china and

generally with the pacific on a much more substantial footing, i think will have enormous long-term sition. china will be the largest country in the world. and without which we can't solve many problems that we face. and i think that recognizing that we're living in a global economy and therefore fors to grow, others must grow, we must open trade. that the economic growth is not a zero sum game, that as our customers grow, we grow. i think important accomplishments is manifest, in the gad agreement, in the various trade agreements that the president has negociated and approved. >> it keeps me healthy but the

collection is young players. and the discovery of young players is always a new, refreshing experience. because this is one to know that this kind of music will not tire. >> rose: look back for me a second. what are you most proud of in the first 70 years? >> i think i never was proud. i was satisfied are-- about things that i say i came to new york as a kind of adventurer. and i feel at home. i feel welcome. and i feel that my life here makes sense. >> rose: why? >> because i could offer something and people understood

what i wanted to bring to that city. music can bring different things. can be exciting, can be thrilling. can be refreshing. i wanted to be touching. i wanted to give people a feeling in a concert hall kind of being at home. being at home with themselve, with their ideas, with their soul. to discover their life also makes sense. while they are listening to music. and i believe this kind of message just came over. and we are very, very glad. >> rose: so when you come, when i come, when someone comes to hear the new york fill harmonic, you want them to walk out of that concert hall having the music connected to who they are and what they're about, and give additional meaning to their

life. >> at least what i believe the music brings to you is always to make you aware who you are. to make you aware that life-and-death can connected to each other. and i feel that music can help you like the-- to learn that death is necessary because it gives you life a kind of rate and importance, that it can say i would like if i say fairwell to this, that i have done something-- for other people. >> my paifnting ises start withdrawings.

i get ideas and then i draw. it's sort of magic to me. i have started in paris in 1949. i did my first picture with panels. i wanted to explore color age it started by observing lights in the seine river sparkling. and i would see that and think i want to do a painting that has that same explosion. but very, very del cattily of the light reflecting. and so i didn't want to make a point of the painting. i deviced a grid and i did it

with chance, picking out numbers as colors, and making a painting of chance and that developed with colors. i wanted each color to have its own canvas. and i separated, i put the panels together to make a painting. and the-- has the large painting foi a large wall, with of 4 different-- panels. and he came up and he wanted to go and look at it with me. and then he said you know, we do similar things. and i didn't understand what he meant. but now i understand that he was

saying that his work is about spirit all things. in the same way, maybe. then when 54, when i came back to america, the paintings changed. i mean new york was a different place than paris. and i began doing-- paintings. paint one canvas with two colors. and one color was always more important than the other it was like a form and a ground. but with the panels, the object quality of the painting was the form, with base colors. and the wall became the ground. i wanted it to be a real object

on top of another. not a painted version of it. and it's carrying over from a painting portrait, a painting landscape. you make a scene. it's not really real. but if i do one canvas red and on top of it do black, then it is a real reality of it, of the real object quality. say if i did a drawing of you or a painting of you on a canvas, it would be that i was making a portrait. but in doing this, when i put the two panels together, it's more real. that's all i can say. it is magic to me.

>> are you making portraits of candle sticks in a way. >> well, perhaps, yes. yes, that is it. >> rose: for more about this program and earlier episodes visit us online amount of pbs.org an charlie rose.com.

>> rose: funding for charlie rose is provided by the following:

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