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

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.

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.

Am I afraid of high notes? Of course I am afraid. What sane man is not?

The richest people in the world are the people that love the most

Not only have computers changed the way we think, they've also discovered what makes humans think - or think we're thinking. At least enough to predict and even influence it.

I guess at the end of the day, all women like to be appreciated and treated with respect and kindness.

When men ask me how I know so much about men, they get a simple answer: everything I know about men, I learned from me.

The hard part was when I went into the studio with co-producer Eric Broucek, and he started slashing my demos. I always sweat that.

Evidently, quality of wits is more important than quantity.

I'm ripe for the picking for the Scientologists - one of those creeps. Someone's got to find me. Some little weird cult can just pluck me up, because I'm ripe for the picking.

There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy.

If you look at the new places opening, they're quite gutsy, earthy places.

It's all in the art. You get no credit for living.