If you see me once, you cannot confuse me with another.

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.

As long as you hate, there will be people to hate.

You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you...

It was always this way: The more people talked, the more they obscured. You didn't need to argue for the truth. You could see it.

White writers can be blunt about race and get all activist because their anger isn’t threatening

They've listed my name in the dictionary - 'Imeldific' is used to mean ostentatious extravagance... But the truth will prevail.

I don't like doing movies, period. Movies are hard. I like TV.

We forgive freely or we do not really forgive at all.

Insensitivity makes arrogance ugly; empathy is what makes humility beautiful.

Faith is facing reality without being discouraged by it.

All false practices and affections of knowledge are more odious to God, and deserve to be so to men, than any want or defect of knowledge can be.