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

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

Live today. You never know when tomorrow will be a day too late.

Remember what I used to tel you when you were a little girl? ‘A fool and her money soon part.’ Current-day translation? Stop pissing away your assets at Bloomingdale’s.

Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills.

She said interruptions were simply God's appointments.

We find it hard to believe that other people's thoughts are as silly as our own, but they probably are.

It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.

I'm not interested in those who do me wrong. There's not enough time in the day for them.

A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.

I didn't know that other people thought things about me. I didn't know that they looked.