It is a very honest world, our work. I think you cannot fake anything.

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.

...you definitely are deep water Dr. Fisher. Fathoms deep.

Ignore the negativity in your life. Right now I'm taking bullets for other people and sometimes in life that's where courage comes from.

O be very sure That no man will learn anything at all, Unless he first will learn humility.

This is deathless: the liberation of the mind through lack of clinging.

Rafferty [Law] plays three or four instruments. He is very gifted. Whereas I pick instruments up and kind of stare at them and go, "I can't ever possibly play this." And I don't!

I've had to learn and discipline myself that I'm much happier and much less depressed if I give myself a project. It's just that simple.

When a lot of musicians change styles, their songwriting suffers because they want to be different.

Everybody likes to have a place to think, to meditate, to eat a burrito.

Minnesotans hate zeal. Zeal is right up there on the list of suspicious emotional behaviors like joy and despair. Always err on the side of blandness.