It seems like the older I get, the more unreal the world becomes.

I don’t really have a relationship with the guitar; it’s like my slutty lover, whereas I’m married to the piano

I'm a big fan of the Pre-Raphaelites. Millais, Edward Burne-Jones, and I realised recently that my music is Pre-Raphaelite in a certain way, in that it reinvents an older era and romanticises it, puts it in this gilded frame.

When I was signed, at the age of 23...the fact that I presented myself as an out gay man was very, very unusual.

I find so many songwriters today are missing an element ... either the production is amazing but the songs aren't, or it's the other way around.

When I was young, my mother [folk singer Kate McGarrigle] brought home this recording of Verdi's Requiem and we listened to it from top to bottom. By the end of it, I was a completely different person. It was literally a requiem mass for my former self. I was about 12 or 13. The Requiem just totally hooked into what I was going through emotionally - discovering my sexuality right at the time when AIDS was devastating my community and dealing with intense parental situations.

Life is the longest death in California.