And that's the mission of The Innocence Project in New York is to exonerate people who have been wrongfully convicted and also work from a policy angle with Congress and state legislatures to prevent future wrongful convictions.

American movies and music deliver themes of freedom innocence and power that appeal to others - partly because America itself was put together out of a multiplicity of national traditions.

I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.

More than fantasy or even science fiction Ray Bradbury wrote horror and like so many great horror writers he was himself utterly without fear of anything. He wasn't afraid of looking uncool - he wasn't scared to openly love innocence or to be optimistic or to write sentimentally when he felt that way.

Louis Malle was the best filmmaker I've ever worked with. He was such an artist. He was dealing with the theme of innocence and experience.

I had no idea that he was going to write that but I've always believed that insecurity was what would keep you always in your innocence no matter what the business did.

I might have some character traits that some might see as innocence or naive. That's because I discovered peace and happiness in my soul. And with this knowledge I also see the beauty of human life.

I'm just glad I was able to return to some of that innocence and beauty I had as a child when I started my own family and my children brought me back some of that spirit.

Art saved me it got me through my depression and self-loathing back to a place of innocence.

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.

Those who improve with age embrace the power of personal growth and personal achievement and begin to replace youth with wisdom innocence with understanding and lack of purpose with self-actualization.