Duncan Sheik on putting Steven Sater's words to music, 2001

"Usually when I write, I write music first and then words later, whenever they come to me. So it was a little bit of an adjustment, but once I got into the process it became very natural. In fact I really enjoyed it, because it becomes this kind of fascinating puzzle, how you can make a line of text work as a musical phrase, and how you can take the structure of the given text and make that work as a musical structure in terms of the whole song. It became its own little adventure each time.”

From an interview for Acoustic Guitar. At the time, Sheik had recently released Phantom Moon, on which he put Steven Sater's poetry to music. They've continued to collaborate since, notably on the current Broadway musical Spring Awakening.