I am a tenor buff. I hear myself.

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.

Think wisely before you exercise an action. Having done so however, never look back and regret. That would be a shame

He was hurting, and I hurt with him. We had never been able to maintain any level of detachment from each other’s suffering, and wedidn’t now.

Do we not realize that self respect comes with self reliance?

I was born a poor black child.

A woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right.

The very truths that gave birth to the Pentecostal movement are today generally rejected as too strong.

We’re being ripped off and screwed by a bunch of liars, thieves, crooks, and criminals, and they’re not the folks below. Don’t look in the streets, look in the corporate suites.

You yourself are participating in the evil, or you are not alive. Whatever you do is evil for somebody. This is one of the ironies of the whole creation.

All the things we value in society don't mean much in fiction.

The best thing about candy is that it can't be spoiled by the adult world. Candy is innocent.