I'm very pro presenting the best music I can to the widest audience possible.

I performed in Sydney some years ago for the Sydney Festival and I am just so pleased to be returning to the wonderful Sydney Opera House and also performing in Melbourne for the first time.

I would just like to say that opera is no longer about fat people in breastplates shattering wine glasses.

That was when I realised that music is the most profound, magical form of communication there is.

I do hope that our spring will be starting shortly and we will all be able to enjoy some sunshine again.

Opera is credible drama now, and it costs less than going to a football match. What have you got to lose?

The musical heritage of Yorkshire is deep and wide.

To tell you the truth, I never listen to opera at home.

I'm engaging my diaphragm as I'm speaking to you right now.

There are a lot of unseen elements to having a successful singing career.

It worries me that young singers think you can shortcut the training and go straight to fame and fortune, and programmes like Pop Idol have encouraged that.

The way through the worldIs more difficult to find than the way beyond it.

Courage is not the absence of fear. It is accepting and neutralizing the fear with the power of love.

My ego is my employee – and I, the witness, am its employer.

It wasn't the wild animals that scared her, but the civilised ones.

The Banh Mi sandwich is really the only good argument for colonialism.

The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic.

I think my comedic style is at once bashful and explosive. It's a little bit perverted, and a little bit ladylike and old-fashioned, which is a great mix. Sort of tangy.

Take not away the life you cannot give: For all things have an equal right to live.

We're self obsessed and mad and stupid - not that other people can't be the same way - but the extremes are kind of honest in some mad way. Anyway, I like them.

I've been living with myself all of my life, so I know all of me. So when I watch me, all I see is me. It's boring.