Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

I've now been in this country for thirteen years since I was seventeen. So this is my second home.

Since I was seventeen I thought I might be a star. I'd think about all my heroes Charlie Parker Jimi Hendrix... I had a romantic feeling about how these people became famous.

I learned the truth at seventeen That love was meant for beauty queens And high school girls with clear skinned smiles Who married young and then retired.

I was very much into buying contemporary art but I've just decided I want to get rid of it all. Not that it's not great art but all of a sudden my mood has changed and I want to go back to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century masters.

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.

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.