Japanese traditional architecture is created based on these conditions. This is the reason you have a very high degree of connection between the outside and inside in architecture.

When I look back at my role as labor secretary, I regret that I didn't fight harder. I mean, inside the meeting rooms in the old executive office building and the cabinet office, and even when I was talking in private to the president - President Clinton, I did try to argue my case, but I feel, in retrospect, I should have argued even more passionately. Maybe I even should have threatened to resign.

I always thought superintelligence was a long way off and we could worry about it later, and the problem for now is just to make these more intelligent. I wish I'd thought sooner about what was going to happen.

I always felt like I could blow it and nothing would never happen until this happened.

No. Although I have to qualify that. Though he was, by jazz standards, a very square composer, he was, by musical theater standards, a not square composer, and he taught me to be less square. I tend to be square.

You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, You're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right. I'm the witch. You're the world.

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.

But that’s part of the process, isn’t it? Something might not fit in the show. Musicals are — particularly musicals — plays also, but musicals particularly are… the last collaborator is your audience, and so you’ve got to wait ’til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration. And when the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you’ve written. Things that seem to work well — work in a sense of carry the story forward and be integral to the piece — suddenly become a little less relevant or a little less functional or a little overlong or a little overweight or a little whatever. And so you start reshaping from an audience.

Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.

I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it.