I'm careful to pay every single penny on my taxes. I don't have any money offshore.
— Jerry Della Femina
I'm happy to pay my fair share - which is whatever the tax is right now.
There's nothing worse than winning but being told by people that you're losing.
With all my outside activities, I have to remind people I am really in advertising.
A computer is a wonderful thing, but it's cold, and what comes out of it is sort of cold.
I want to die at my desk.
There's an eternal war between a creative person and the business person.
Whether you're a mafia guy or in advertising, you always end up going back to your family.
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.
There's still a place for someone to come up with a strong headline, some copy in a commercial that's well written. I'm not saying it was better in the old days; it's just a totally different way of communicating.
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.
Most account guys live with fear in their hearts.
There are no client conflicts, only bad explanations.
If they can't suck money out of the Hamptons, a candidate really has to throw in the sponge.
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.
People don't generally like advertising that takes a stand.
People who are visiting Long Island find it's very beautiful, and they are quick to try Long Island foods, wines and other products.
At one point, I had over 800 employees, and I always paid all health care for my people - including a man who was my assistant who got HIV. I wound up paying his medical bills, which went into the hundreds of thousands. I'm not making myself out to be a saint. I did the right thing.
Why do all our friends and relatives destroy the summer for us? Why can't they get married in February?
The fact is, Joe Isuzu is very successful at selling cars.
On the weekends, some people garden; I slice salmon.
I invented myself.
My first marriage ended after 24 years.
What I love about the Don Draper character is that he's so real and filled with all these contradictions.
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.
I always had more women working for me than men.
I think it's good to have switched to a much more visual world and that people are not all that interested in words.
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.
Imagine there wasn't photography. Where would we be? How would I remember what I looked like as a kid? It links us all. It keeps us all together; it's what our history is.
I'm a driver, and I love it.
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.
In our quest to tweet, like, and trend, we have forgotten that brands can be built through advertising. Ads can generate big ideas that can never be trumped by tactics. That is the magic of an ad, and that is what is missing from many ads today.
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.
Almost everything looks better from a distance, Long Island included.
I don't come from a lot of money. In fact, I don't come from any money.
Good products win out.
'Business Week' is guilty of very shoddy reporting.
You can't be impatient about growth, because that's what leads people to make mistakes.
I have a small vocabulary, which I move around fast.
'Mad Men' is celebrating a time that no longer exists.
I only know two to three people that I grew up with in advertising in the 1960s who are married to the same women.
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 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 couldn't get along with the French.
The establishment can't change. It can't give people anything different; it can't make the turn.
I don't remember most of the '60s and '70s.
The Hamptons are filled with people who are winners Monday through Friday.
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.
It is now possible to target adverts to the right person at the right time in the right place. But that is not enough.
If the FBI is now in charge of bad taste, we're all doomed.
