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.

I will take my coffee black / never snack / hang with the wolves who are sheepish.

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.

These are just the rules and regulations Of the birds, and the bees The earth, and the trees, Not to mention the gods, not to mention the gods.

I definitely have a Luddite's approach to what's going on. I find that as I get older, I get stupider.

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.

I've been thinking of trying my hand at rap. I've been recording snippets on my BlackBerry.