Horse riding is a perfect comparison with singing.You must know where the double fences are.

People think I'm disciplined. It is not discipline. It is devotion. There is a great difference.

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.

I think a life in music is a life beautifully spent, and this is what I have devoted my life to.

The rivalry is with ourself. I try to be better than is possible. I fight against myself, not against the other.

If children are not introduced to music at an early age, I believe something fundamental is actually being taken from them.

Music making is the most joyful activity possible, the most perfect expression of any emotion.

Some singers want the audience to love them. I love the audience.

Learning music by reading about it is like making love by mail.

You don't need any brains to listen to music.

As an art form, opera is a rare and remarkable creation. For me, it expresses aspects of the human drama that cannot be expressed in any other way, or certainly not as beautifully.

Sleeping is not a loss of consciousness, but it is a temporary loss of integration of awareness.

If it was that easy, the American military would have figured it out years ago.

A Hubble Space Telescope photograph of the universe evokes far more awe for creation than light streaming through a stained glass window in a cathedral.

Assume responsibility for outcomes as well as for the processes and people you work with. How you achieve results will shape the kind of person you become.

Speech may be barren; but it is ridiculous to suppose that silence is always brooding on a nestful of eggs.

Ze soldiers are very hoppy shooting ze pipples who say that ze pipples are not hoppy.

I can't change everything by myself but I can be one of the people who are trying to change the situation.

As I've gotten older there's just more awareness around what is good for my body internally, externally, physically. It's all about reading labels and being aware and conscious of what goes in.

Your job is to get your audience to care about your obsessions.

If you don't fall how are you going to know what getting up is like.