If I'd been a housemaid I'd have been the best in Australia - I couldn't help it. It's got to be perfection for me.

The first rule in opera is the first rule in life: see to everything yourself

Music is not written in red, white and blue. It is written in the heart's blood of the composer.

If you wish to understand me at all (and to write an autobiography is only to open a window into one's heart) you must understand first and foremost, that I am an Australian.

There are two things I like stiff and one of them's jelly.

What are we singers but the silver-voiced messengers of the poet and the musician?

You won’t be famous until people start saying the worst things they can about you. Don’t worry! It’s a good sign!

One of the drawbacks of Fame is that one can never escape from it.

Always sing below your potential.

If I'd been a housemaid I'd have been the best in Australia-I couldn't help it. It's got to be perfection for me.

Irony: Taking a 170-year-old envy-based "philosophy, " which has led to the murder of several hundred million human beings and the oppression of billions more, and calling it "progressive".

We all have powers within us that we don't know exist until we're tested. There are no limitations to what you can do if you have the determination.

From infinite awareness, something comes forward, a sense of infinite awareness and finite awareness. That perception is the birth of a being.

There is within us a moral instinct which forbids us to rejoice at the death of even an enemy.

Work for immortality if you will: then wait for it.

Doubts can produce positive side-effects - if you work toward resolving them.

She was the archetypal selfless mother: living only for her children, sheltering them from the consequences of their actions - and in the end doing them irreparable harm.

You don't show up on game day and expect to be great. Greatness happens in practice. You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.

I guess I kind of lived in a fairytale world... looking at everything through rose-colored glasses. I probably always will, to a certain extent.

The most important thing about my profession is finding the truth, finding the reality of these shows.