Dedication: My thanks to the people who showed me that opera was stranger than I could imagine. I can best repay their kindness by not mentioning their names here.

Imagination, not intelligence, made us human.

I'm up to my neck in the real world, every day. Just you try doing your VAT return with a head full of goblins.

Do you think it's possible for an entire nation to be insane?

Neither of my parents went to church, but they did everything that you needed to do to be Christian. That's something a Quaker would call an intimation of the divine.

I don’t think it's weak to admit you made a mistake. That takes strength, if you ask me.

The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap and much more difficult to find.