I'm very much a romantic. I'm highly attuned to an older sensibility, which I believe is alive and well. We're not that far ahead of the Romantic Age in society.

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.

If I had had more of a strategic attitude towards how to reveal my sexuality, and if I'd even played with it a little more, I could have sold a lot more albums and been a lot more famous.

Places that have experienced great defeat experience a kind of rebirth, which I think America has to do - unless we want to get more decrepit. I don't think we have to destroy the place totally.

My love of maple syrup. I've been known to knock back a can over a couple days: A swig here, a swig there, and next thing you know it's gone. It's a habit I have to stave off. I don't want to lose all my teeth.

I knew I was gay when I was around 13. There wasn't the internet, there weren't support groups, AIDS was everywhere. I mean, it was really dark.

I definitely was always expected and encouraged to be a songwriter from a very young age, ... But really it's because, as a child, I thought I was Judy Garland. And when I started out, I was a little nuts. I thought I was a classic, legendary superstar when only 10 people knew who I was. I feel in some ways that my confidence is misinterpreted as arrogance, which is understandable. But I've also always thought that false modesty is evil.