In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger.

Most children - I know I did when I was a kid - fantasize another set of parents. Or fantasize no parents. They don't tell their real parents about that - you don't want to tell Mom and Dad. Kids lead a very private life. And I was a typical child, I think. I was a liar.

I grew up in a house that was in a constant state of mourning.

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.

It is such an abundance of idiocy that you lose courage. That you lose hope. I don't want to lose hope. I get through every day. I'm pretty good. I work. I sleep. I sing. I walk.

I became a set designer for opera.

I know there are supposedly happy people in this world. I never believed it, but I take it for granted. God knows, they're all on television.