My advice to singers is always the same: 'Don't sing the song, sing the lyric.'

When I left Yale, I was prepared to write anything.

I applied to Yale, and I got in.

You have to do what is real and what is right and what is good and what you believe in. It doesn't mean it's always going to work. It doesn't. But when it does, it is truthful and forever.

I'll write anything; I don't want to judge its form.

There's more musical freedom on Madison Avenue than anywhere else. It's an Eden for a composer.