LOS ANGELES (AP) - Quotes from the long life of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, who died Wednesday at 91.
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“Much of my life has been like an adolescent dream of an adult life. If you were still a boy, in almost a Peter Pan kind of way, and could have just the perfect life that you wanted to have, that’s the life I invented for myself.” -Hefner to the Los Angeles Times in 1992.
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“We enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.” -Editorial in the 1953 inaugural issue of Playboy.
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“Well, if we hadn’t had the Wright brothers, there would still be airplanes. If there hadn’t been an Edison, there would still be electric lights. And if there hadn’t been a Hefner, we’d still have sex. But maybe we wouldn’t be enjoying it as much. So the world would be a little poorer. Come to think of it, so would some of my relatives.” -Hefner in a Playboy interview in 1974.
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“I think Hefner himself wants to go down in history as a person of sophistication and glamour. But the last person I would want to go down in history as is Hugh Hefner.” -Ms. magazine founder Gloria Steinem, who worked as a bunny in a Playboy club in the 1960s.
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“Women are the major beneficiaries of getting rid of the hypocritical old notions about sex. Now some people are acting as if the sexual revolution was a male plot to get laid. One of the unintended by-products of the women’s movement is the association of the erotic impulse with wanting to hurt somebody.” -Hefner, in response to Steinem.
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“Part of the reason that I am who I am is my Puritan roots run deep. My folks are Puritan. My folks are prohibitionists. There was no drinking in my home. No discussion of sex. And I think I saw the hurtful and hypocritical side of that from very early on.” -Hefner to the AP in 2011.
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“I’ve spent so much of my life looking for love in all the wrong places.” -Hefner to the New York Times in 1992.
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“I’ve had a bachelor party for 30 years. Why do I need one now?” -Hefner on the eve of his marriage in 1989.
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