I knew I was gay when I was around 13. There wasn't the internet, there weren't support groups, AIDS was everywhere. I mean, it was really dark.

My mother had a lot of parties when I was a child. There'd always be a moment when she would place me on the upright piano and have me sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

I'd be hanging out in my bathrobe all day, stinky, just writing, and my mom allowed me to do this-as long as I was writing songs. She said, 'As long as you're seriously working on music, I'll support you. Don't get a job, because if you work, it will crush you.

I came out of the closet very young, and I had to cut my teeth pretty fast.

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.

I'm hyper light-sensitive and must sleep in the equivalent of a sealed tomb.

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.