I became a larger than life figure for one reason only. When you're quoted in the 'Wall Street Journal ' the 'New York Times ' constantly as the expert in the business people assume you're a lot bigger than you are. And then I had to run like hell to catch up with my own image.

When I started the business I hardly went home. I became very driven about work and about my career.

Both my brothers became physicians and I of course wandered into a business where the undisciplined are welcome.

Beauty and the Beast became the first animated feature ever nominated for best picture.

So we just kind of created our own thing and that's part of the beauty of Athens: is that it's so off the map and there's no way you could ever be the East Village or an L.A. scene or a San Francisco scene that it just became its own thing.

During the 80s and 90s we all became consumed with ourselves. In the 21st century we've come back to simpler times. People are struggling economically and this has forced them to scale back the material aspects of their lives and realise the beauty of finding the simple joy in being with the people we love.

I also became close to nature and am now able to appreciate the beauty with which this world is endowed.

The war changed everybody's attitude. We became international almost overnight.

Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.

Consider the momentous event in architecture when the wall parted and the column became.

The reason why I love people and writing about them is because they don't always respond with hate and anger. If they did I wouldn't have a story to tell. Who wants to know about someone who was brutalised and became brutal? I'm interested in the exceptions.

When I was working on Eye of the Beholder I played a character who is so aloof that my whole lifestyle became very aloof. If someone knocked on my door there was a part of me that went into a rage because I wanted to be isolated and alone.

Some broad themes brought me where I am today. At a very young age my hobby became thinking and finding connections.

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.

At a certain age it just became apparent to me that this was probably the work that I would have to do.

I think the sport of wrestling which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34 kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write.

Though the Jazz Age continued it became less and less an affair of youth. The sequel was like a children's party taken over by the elders.