I grew up in the New Zealand countryside. We didn't have television until I was 14, so sing-alongs were our only entertainment.

I knew that I could be more creative onstage, to state my own case and deliver my own interpretation of the role much more aggressively than in the recording studio.

Opera is for a lifetime, not just a minute.

When I perform Strauss, it is as if the music fits me like a glove. My voice seems to lie in a happy area in this music, which is lyrical and passionate at the same time.

I'm completely in charge of my own life now. Sometimes there's no one there to slap me on the hand and say: 'Stop being so bullish and bossy,' and things like that.

I felt that the studio recording process makes you stand still too long.

My energy is undiminished. Someone said to me the other day, 'Are you retired?' and I said, 'Well, I'm just trying to prove that I'm not.' There's so many things to do.

The word 'no' is a very good word in a singer's repertoire.

I never had the influence of any other singer in my music, so I sounded like myself all the time.

That's been my sort of aim in life, to never miss an opportunity.

I'm more confident now than I've ever been. As you get older, you have to be.

Without the fear of God, men do not even observe justice and charity among themselves.

Storytelling is the very soul of humankind made plain for all to experience.

Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will's impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly.

There is no morality without temptation; otherwise it is just lack of opportunity.

When one's function is to teach the loftiest wisdom, it is difficult to resist the temptation to believe that until you have spoken, nothing has been said.

I sometimes forget a face, but I never forget a back.

I think what's so interesting for people is that I don't take it so seriously and yet I am still immersed in the [fashion] industry.

To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

Not everything you do is going to be a masterpiece, but you get art there and you try and sometimes it really happens. The other times you’re just stretching your soul.

You have to study your field and you have to find out how other people do it, and you have to keep working and learning and practicing and ultimately, you would be able to do it.