They say the world used to be bigger. The world's still the same--there's just less in it.

There's a drive in me that won't allow me to do certain things that are easy.

My beef was with essentially being a product. I didn't want to be a product, so I tried to get fired, but they didn't fire me, which was weird.

The only responsibility I feel is to deliver something that's new or at least to attempt that. The real responsibility is to entertain and to try and make people laugh.

Alice and I, we'd met before, but we were able to kind of sit and chat on the set of Dark Shadows, and talk about maybe writing some songs together. We started doing that, and then one thing led to another and it became this Vampire project - because he was telling stories about all those days, which were fascinating.

One thing that's been a great, uplifting experience through all this is, since the first "Pirates" [movie], the people who've gone to see the films, the audience members. You meet people on the street - whether they're 5, 25, 65 or 85 - they've all had the same experience, and they've all enjoyed it. So that's what keeps me moving forward in this crazy process.

Ironically, it was only maybe a year prior to Tim calling I had re-read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and what I took away from it was these very strange, little cryptic nuggets that he'd thrown in there.