A Quote by Andrew Tobias

I was a writer for 'New York' magazine. I had been to business school, but what did I know? Still, everybody from the receptionists on up to the editor would ask me what they should do with their money.
I had grown up as a feature writer, and basically my career had been in The National Lampoon and as a magazine editor, and I'd never been a reporter.
I was interested in creating things that I could be proud of and so, you know, I was interested in being an editor of a magazine, things that I could be proud of, and so, you know, I was interested in being an editor of a magazine, but in order to be an editor of a magazine I had to become a publisher as well. I had to pay the bills. I had to worry about the printing and the paper manufacturing and the distribution of that magazine.
The biggest stress for me at New York Magazine was when I was a middle-of-the-pack editor, and I had no control over my own schedule.
My dad was an editor and a writer, and that's really where I would have liked to have gone. But the genetic link was not intact there, so I wound up going into business. But I love to write, still. I'm not a great writer, but I enjoy it.
I ended up buying business.com for $150,000 because I wanted to make it a magazine. It would have been a 'Time'-type magazine: how to do business on the Internet. And I was offered a lot of money for that domain. I played two buyers against each other.
I did not go to fashion school. I arrived in New York in 1986 from Kansas City and was working as accessories editor for Mademoiselle Magazine. While working at Mademoiselle I noticed that the market lacked stylish and sensible handbags, so I decided to create my own.
I went to New York for the first time when I was in college for a school trip and, uh, it did not appeal to me. It was too much hustle and bustle. And I have since now found a New York where if I lived there now, I know where I would want to live.
The New York Times Bestseller 'The Amateur,' written by Ed Klein, former editor of the 'New York Times Magazine,' is one of the best books I've read.
My last point about getting started as a writer: do something first, good or bad, successful or not, and write it up before approaching an editor. The best introduction to an editor is your own written work, published or not. I traveled across Siberia on my own money before ever approaching an editor; I wrote my first book, Siberian Dawn, without knowing a single editor, with no idea of how to get it published. I had to risk my life on the Congo before selling my first magazine story. If the rebel spirit dwells within you, you won't wait for an invitation, you'll invade and take no hostages.
My very first venture was a national student magazine to try to campaign against the [Vietnam] War. And so I wanted to be an editor. I wanted to bring the magazine out. And in order for the magazine to survive I had to worry about the printing and the paper manufacturing and the distribution. And, you know, I had to try to, at the end of the year, have more money coming in than going out.
I was very much a tough New York street kid. I went to a school where you had to learn how to get along with everybody or fight with everybody, and I did my fair share of both.
If you're an editor at TIME magazine or writer at TIME magazine and you are shocked to look at real documented research that says men and women are different - what in the world did you believe beforehand?
I was co-editor of the magazine called The Jazz Review, which was a pioneering magazine because it was the only magazine, then or now, in which all the articles were written by musicians, by jazz men. They had been laboring for years under the stereotype that they weren't very articulate except when they picked up their horn.
I have come to understand myself as more of a New York writer, or more of a woman writer, but I don't feel like that while I'm writing. But I think that most New Yorkers would object to calling me a New Yorker. I didn't grow up here.
New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless.... Always before I had felt like a person, an individual, hopeful that I could mold my life according to some desire of my own. But here in New York I was ignorant, insignificant, unimportant--one in millions whose destiny concerned no one. New York did not even know of my existence. Nor did it care.
Do you know I had the best time on 'Loose Women' and I'm very, very fond of the show still. I know everybody who's on it and it's a great open door to go back if I need to. Everybody on there is lovely and I've got a great relationship with them - the new ones and the old ones. It's been a big part of my life over the years, so it's nice I can nip back. I do miss everybody on it, but we're all on What'sApp, so I know what everybody is up to.
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