When I was seventeen I worked as a counsellor at a co-ed sleep-away camp for eight weeks. I loved it but it could be harrowing - it was far too much responsibility for someone my age.

'Dallas' hit a chord back in the late Seventies and Eighties because it was the age of greed: here you have this unapologetic character who is mean and nasty and ruthless and does it all with an evil grin. I think people related to JR back then because we all have someone we know exactly like him. Everyone in the world knows a JR.

Over the years Woodstock got glorified and romanticised and became the event that symbolised Utopia. It's the last page of our collective memory of the age of innocence. Then things turned ugly and would never be the same again.

Genius is present in every age but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.

Oh if I had been loved at the age of seventeen what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon it can completely ruin your constitution.

The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes but you don't change at all. And that of course causes great confusion.