I like to try new things.

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

When I wrote the opera, I made a deal with myself that for at least an hour a day I would work on it, even if it meant just sitting on my piano bench, staring into space and thinking about it. It's about keeping it regular, like your bowel movements - let's get real: it's your bodily artistic movements! It comes from the same place.

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.

I personally don’t have the ability to lie about my life, for better or for worse.

It's about how whenever I fall in love, I have these expectations of the experience being a perfect dream, which, of course, ruins it. I imagine cradling my lover's head in my lap in a cab in the middle of the night, and drinking champagne in an elegant hotel suite. But life's rarely like that, and I usually end up walking home by myself in the rain.

I think the minute you mention death, people run for the hills - unless it's heavy metal. People do not like death.