Yes, a major one, along with Sir Georg Solti. Because they’re both Hungarian, I used to call them the Hungarian mafia. He was always onto me. “Have you bring to Vera?” And then she’d say, “Georg, he won’t be liking this bit.” And between the two of them, there was this whish-whish-whish, like sword fighting, and I was being killed by the both of them. But I enjoyed every minute of it. It was good for me.

Very much, because he’s interested in that same kind of process. Bonnard, Matisse, Indian miniature paintings, which he collected. That’s where the light comes from, a spectral relationship within the painting itself.

I did think about Woody Allen’s movies with Frances Ha because Woody Allen’s movies were also in black and white and very contemporary. Manhattan and Stardust Memories are not period pictures. Particularly in Manhattan you have the grandeur of the black and white and the Gershwin music sort of playing up against a more intimate storyline in which, when you break it down, is really just people sleeping with each other and trying to figure out their lives. But something about the filmmaking and the approach to it makes it feel almost epic. And, ultimately, the concerns of those people are epic. That movie is a masterpiece.

It was a very important finding for us because we were involved in nucleic acids. There weren’t many people interested in nucleic acids. There weren’t many people who believed that was the way to find drugs. But when we found out the structure, and we began to understand what kind of bases could be incorporated, and which ones couldn’t, and where they could be incorporated, it put a whole new dimension on it. So it had a very significant effect.

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.

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.

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.

One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.

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