I strive for what you do find in Shakespeare's work - that there is a definite humanity and a definite character behind the writing in the sonnets, and it's very real because it's so deeply personal. I try to aspire to that in what I do.

I have a good face for what I do.

Being uncool is being pretty much the coolest you can be.

Opera needs to be a total escape from real life. To relate to what we're going through today is fine and dandy, but it's really about being transported and completely swept away by a romantic notion.

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

In the music business, to survive for so long, you have to be able to cut off from your emotions sometimes. And being a father, you're faced with that situation. I know that my father was, with me. I understand why he had to be distant, because to rip yourself away, time after time, is almost more devastating.

I basically have needed to go to the piano and give voice periodically to, you know - I'm always afraid to describe it as a kind of therapeutic process, but nevertheless it was a type of unloading that had to occur due to my personal life with my mother's health or just my professional trials and tribulations.