I am always writing; if you want to survive in this business, you need to keep working, keep creating and never stop the output.
When it comes to sitting down and composing, there is no hesitation, no concern, no critics breathing fire down my neck. For me, writing a song is the purest part of all. No one can mess with that.
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 should write a musical. That is probably one of the final areas that I should pay attention to, because it does kind of involve everything. It's got theatre, it's got young, pretty people... And it's got money!
Why be in music, why write songs, if you can't use them to explore life or an idealized vision of life?
I strive for what you do find in Shakespeare's work - that there is a definite humanity and a definite character behind the writing in the sonnets, and it's very real because it's so deeply personal. I try to aspire to that in what I do.
