Why is my needle stuck in childhood? I don't know why. I guess it's because that's where my heart is.

I was a very sickly child. My parents were immigrants. They were not decorous. They were not discreet. They always thought I was gonna die.

A whole new world of Italian music was springing up, and [Giuseppe] Verdi was seen as old. Boito got Verdi all excited about the possibility of doing another opera, another kind of opera. In fact, Verdi composed his two best operas, Otello and Falstaff, in his eighties.

My life in Brooklyn was in constant danger because of my bad health.

Do parents sit down and tell their kids everything? I don't know. I don't know. I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth.

I believe there is no part of our lives, our adult as well as child life, when we're not fantasizing, but we prefer to relegate fantasy to children, as though it were some tomfoolery only fit for the immature minds of the young. Children do live in fantasy and reality; they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do.

I'm scared of watching a TV show about vampires. I can't fall asleep.