All humans realize they are loved when witnessing the dawn; early morning is the triumph of good over evil. Absolved by light we decide to go on.

I'm very blessed, mainly because even though my family is mostly in show business, it's really centered around music. My parents were very successful in many ways, but they weren't necessarily top of the charts. We were never wealthy because of music. We always had to work and we always had to struggle a little bit, and I think at the end of the day that's been very good for me, because I have a sense of it being very ephemeral.

I think everybody identified at a pretty young age that I was fairly entranced with myself. And that I had to be tempered.

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.

Well, my great lesson with that was I went to the same production twice - once completely high and once completely sober - and both times were equally wonderful.

I could always escape into this demi-monde of homosexuality, which I feel really indebted to. It stopped me being a 'mummy's boy.'

My greatest experiences in the theatre and the most religious experiences in my life - of which going to the opera is one for me - have been with the Romantic composers' repertoire: it's Wagner, it's Strauss, Verdi, Puccini. That era gets me every time.