TOM KITT

I'm very influenced by the work of George Martin and the string arrangements that he did for the Beatles.

There's no better feeling as a writer than to see your piece going beyond what you can have ever imagined. And a wonderful way for that to happen is for new audiences to discover it.

Green Day were heroes of mine growing up.

Alice Ripley was someone who had had a huge effect on me when I had gotten out of college and decided that this was the road I wanted to take - to write musicals.

I hope Green Day write more for the theater. They're brilliant at it.

Green Day is a band that you always felt had something to say, whether it was about the times or love or heartache.

I love musical comedy; I love comedy in general, and I have varied taste in terms of books, film, theatre, and culture.

I was meant to be a composer. I was meant to meet my wife and have our three children. There were a number of factors that led to all of that happening, which, if you mapped it out, you would say, 'God, a lot had to go right for all of those things to line up.'

It's all about the audience and the people who support your work and respond to it. So, anytime I hear that 'Next to Normal' is affecting people, it goes beyond my wildest dreams of what I set out to do when I started to write 'Next to Normal.'

Living involves making bold choices. You can't always know how they're going to turn out, and you can always play that game of wondering what might have been if you had made another decision.

In the back of my mind, when we were developing 'Next to Normal,' I always heard Alice Ripley.

My love of Green Day is on so many levels. It's their genius for songwriting, the fact that they write about very important subjects, both personal and political, and they're just a timeless band.

The world of cheerleading is incredibly demanding, incredibly physical, and it has a lot of risk. The way people fly through the air is so thrilling to watch, but it takes hours and hours of practice and training.

Most people have been touched by the battles of mental illness in some way or another. It's either going on in their families or next door to them, or they know people who have experienced it.

I was inspired to be a singer/songwriter from an early age.

I've had so many experiences with film or musicals or books where I just walk away changed in some way. One of the things that makes me want to be a writer is to pour my heart into something and hope that I can affect someone in that same way.

'Next to Normal' was a show many people thought couldn't be done.

Any musical is a major undertaking.

I do not take my job lightly.

I was very lucky in that I had a happy home life and that I was interested in things my parents wanted to provide for me.

One of the arrangements I'm really proud of is '21 Guns' because the chorus has this descending bass line with a suspended type of progression that immediately screamed 'Bach' to me.

I didn't want to box myself into writing just rock music because you can try to force it into moments that don't want it.

I don't think you are ever really done working on something, especially if you can get back into rehearsal.

It's the basic rule of musicals: Characters sing when their emotions become so intense that they can't do anything else.

'American Idiot' is not only one of my favorite albums of all time, it's become an anthem of a generation.