Luck

If a successful person tells you that "there's no such thing as luck", you can bet that they succeeded through sheer luck.

And if they tell you they were "just lucky", they're most likely concealing the shameful, monstrous things they did while clawing their way to the top.

Even if you succeeded entirely though hard work and ambition, why on earth would you deny the existence of luck? I'm talking about luck as random chance, not a supernatural force that makes good things happen. Although you have to admit, some people have better luck than others.

My family lived in Europe in the late '50's and early '60's. They took a trip to Italy and toured the Vatican. Back in those days, the Pope would walk around and give the tourists a thrill. This happened, and my mother lost track of my brother in the crowd. She was afraid he was being trampled. Then she saw an Italian holding him up to the Pope. "Ai! Papa! Qui!" And ever since then, my brother has lived a charmed life.

While he was in Italy being blessed by the Pope, I was a baby back in Germany left behind with the housekeeper and her husband who lost his arm in World War Two. He wouldn't eat fish because all they gave him was fish soup when he was prisoner of war in the Soviet Union. And I'm a failure.

When he was two years old, my other brother was briefly picked up and held by cowboy star Chill Wills when he appeared at a shopping mall and he's in kind of a middle ground between me and our other brother success-wise.