The best advice I got from a painter friend of mine when I said, “If you had one thing to say to an aspiring artist like myself, what would you say?” And she said, “Make as many mistakes as you can.”

Harold Prince went to see it and he wrote me a letter saying don’t be discouraged about this because actually there’s some quite good songs in here. But he also said something which stayed with me all my life, which is that you can’t listen to a musical if you can’t look at it, by which he was actually saying that the designs for Jeeves were absolutely hideous.

I think some of the best advice I got as a young session musician — the first time I played on something — they came back and said, “Now just play me half of what you know. Okay, that was impressive, but that’s not what I need here.” So it’s really an exercise on what’s best going to serve the work in front of you, what’s the job that will do that the best.

Elliot, he has such passion for what it was we were doing that he instilled that passion in me. He was like, “Just go for it. Make it happen.” And I would give him some wild idea, and he’d say, “Go try it.” It was that next set of just knocking down the fear of failure. Just go try anything.

Of dying, only if painful and protracted, or if I get stuck inside an inert body. I would also not wish to be trapped in a jar.

Where to begin? How about working the archery range at the Sportsman’s Show in 1956? “The pointy part of the arrow goes at the front.” Or going door-to-door in 1963, when I was a questionnaire re-writer for a market research company, asking a 36-page questionnaire about bowel movements for a laxative company. “No one is going to answer 36 pages on that!” I bleated. “They’ll kick me out after three pages!” “Ah, but those who don’t,” they said – “those are our target market!”

Getting too involved in too many things. It eats your brain.

Begrudging mean-spiritedness.

I would so much like to have a daily writing schedule. If I had one, I'd probably start about 9.30, write for 2 hours, have lunch, write another 2, then goof off. As it is, I goof off, then panic and write in the evenings. Do not follow my example.

I’d stop saying yes to inessential requests.