Children have an easier ability to tap into the surreal than adults do, in a funny kind of way.

You just have to throw fear out the window. If there's anything that's going to hold you back, it's fear.

That's my policy - to be positive, to just hope that something will happen. If you start with all your fears, your receptivity is for the negative.

I think that both musicals and opera have a capacity to get to an inner emotional landscape.

I received from my experience in Japan an incredible sense of respect for the art of creating, not just the creative product. We're all about the product. To me, the process was also an incredibly important aspect of the total form.

I saw bubbling lava, and at the same moment I saw a reflection of a certain kind of inner turmoil. Because at the moment I looked into that crater, I slipped, and a large piece of volcanic rock took a hole out of my leg. The scar is still there 20, 30 years later. But it's one of those things that reminds you of the kind of risk or the kind of moment in order to push yourself.

You program music with an image and then people are desensitized.