When Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can't explain... I don't need to. I know that if there's a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart.

I'd like to believe an accumulation of experience has made me a sort of a grown-up person, so I can have judgment and taste and whatever.

All I liked to do when I was a kid was draw. My childhood was like my adult life: drawing pictures with my brother, putting the comics up on the glass window, and tracing the characters onto tracing paper or drawing paper and then coloring them. That and making things was all we ever did.

I remember how much - when I was a small boy I was taken to see a version of 'Peter Pan.' I detested it. I mean, the sentimental idea that anybody would want to remain a boy.

In another project I worked on just a few years ago, a staging of Peter and the Wolf, which I translated into Yiddish and sang on a stage in New York City. Thank God very few people knew I was doing it! But the kids in the audience loved it - even though it was all in Yiddish.

I don't write for children. I write, and somebody says, 'That's for children.'

I really don't like the city anymore. You get pushed and harassed and people grope you. It's too tumultuous. It's too crazy.