When it came to using elements of your personal life in your work, my mother was the master, or the mistress. There were three or four songs she wrote about my father - songs about failed love.

I've always gravitated towards opera, and the Royal Opera House is quite possibly the greatest opera house on earth.

When I was signed, at the age of 23...the fact that I presented myself as an out gay man was very, very unusual.

I have never cooked a meal in my life and always end up paying for dozens of people to eat with me.

I wish I could just relax sometimes and make some money, but I always feel like I have to prove some kind of big, profound point.

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