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.

Certainly in terms of my life - anybody's life - you go through death, childbirth and marriage, glory and defeat, and so on.

I think my imagination and my passions are still firing away, but it's really the body that starts to make up the rules. It's not a major problem; it's just when you get a little older you realize how much your body thanks you when you are good to it.

Writing an opera and premiering in England, you could say I was going right into the eye of the storm and I came out successfully. A little tattered and bruised, but so what, I made it.

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.

The more hedonistic you were, the better...I very much subscribed to that as a young artist.

As an artist, you put so much into what you do and it can all be torn down in a nanosecond.