I feel my work is a success in so far as I get to wake up every morning and do what I love to do more than anything in the world.

The music takes on all different jobs and hopefully is part of telling the story. Each song has to be a story unto itself. It's a very different set of muscles.

If my life is not crazy and complicated, then something's wrong. I'm happiest when it is, and the fact of the matter is, it's what keeps me fresh.

I enjoy the kind of characters that allow you to write the dark stuff. I love Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, and when I'm writing for Dracula or Jekyll & Hyde, I get a chance to use that vocabulary.

When you are writing for an artist you are trying to get into that artist's point of view. What does that artist want to say? What do they care about? And musically, you want to show off that artist.

Moral science is better occupied when treating of friendship than of justice.

When I think of you, and you are not there, I see you in my mind's eye always with a book in your hand.

It's hard to get by just upon a smile.

Dreams are not what you see in your sleep, dreams are things which do not let you sleep.

Reading requires a loner's temperament, a high tolerance for silence, and an unhealthy preference for the company of people who are imaginary or dead.

It is one thing to recognise certain potentially useful affinities, and another to act on them.

For an artist, to be normal is a disaster

I'm an old broken down piece of meat and I deserve to be all alone . . .

A wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.

I need the reality of other people, work, to fulfill myself. Must never become a mere mother and housewife.