After years of hotels, I'm horribly inept at cleaning up after myself.

One of the main destructive forces within our family has been these runaway egos. I think if you look at any show business family, that struggle exists.

I think I've done a pretty fantastic job, but of course I want to sell millions of records.

I have never cooked a meal in my life and always end up paying for dozens of people to eat with me.

New York is not the centre for American culture and art that it once was because of the forces of conservatism. Giuliani, capitalism - and then there was 9/11. I really believe that if I leave, it will suffer! Maybe that's why I love it here, because I feel wanted.

The pop world is popular, and it's about what the people want and connecting to the masses, whereas opera, although it was once popular - and I still believe it can be - it has become very elitist and intellectual, but that certainly doesn't sell tickets. It's a struggle, but I've always embraced struggle and thrived off of it, so it's the way my life needs to go.

I am under no illusion that I will ever be the greatest opera composer in the world, with Wagner and Verdi and Strauss before me. I think my work could fit very nicely into musicals, though.