I do not consider myself a guitar player. My father is a guitar player - I'm not.

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

In the music business, to survive for so long, you have to be able to cut off from your emotions sometimes. And being a father, you're faced with that situation. I know that my father was, with me. I understand why he had to be distant, because to rip yourself away, time after time, is almost more devastating.

I want to carve out a serious period of time to focus on the next opera without any distractions. And to do that you need money.

You get to a certain age, and you feel the need to reward yourself just for existing.

I bemoan the fact that all my famous friends have places in St. Bart's and I have to go to Montauk.

I think I've done a pretty fantastic job, but of course I want to sell millions of records.

For me, the iPhone is harder than reading Faust.

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

Once illness strikes, you realize there's not a lot of time for you to do what you really need to do. And there's no time like the present.

I think my mother, more than anyone, knew the importance of inspiration. If it was occurring, you had to use it.

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

Some of the journalists who've ended up writing about our band - and this is disappointing to say - have a very narrow outlook. And because of that they fundamentally misunderstand us.

The whole point of Lady Gaga is that anyone can do it. A few years ago she was a nobody. She talks about how it's important for people to know that by sheer force of will they can bring about anything they want in their lives.

I'm as guilty as anyone else of listening to music track by track.

It's always my mission to try to do something that hasn't been done before, whether that's musically, lyrically or in terms of mixing.

I don't believe in expertise. I don't believe that a film critic feels a film more deeply than any person who walks into a theater. I don't believe that.

Well, I think that I have a complicated relationship with whiteness because oftentimes, I pass as white, and I recognize that. I would be disingenuous to pretend that I don't pass as white.

Honestly, I never felt like I wasn't an artist on my own. I always felt like the music I made was mine, whether it was part of a collaboration with people.

I work on music with different people, and I work on music on my own. That's my life.

I'll probably continue writing songs about New York until I die.

I don't think teenagers in 2017 identify with heterosexuality, and that's a positive.

I feel like there's no one kind of person who comes to my shows. Sometimes I've been surprised by the people who will stop me on the street to tell me that they're into my music.

It's easier for me to remember things based on the releases of albums. The year is such an arbitrary thing.