My book has a lot of parts of my life that people don't know about.

I was born in Montreal and came from a lower-middle-class family.

My mother was a wonderful, wonderful woman with a lovely voice who hated housework, hated cooking even more and loved her children. She was always arranging church activities such as a bazaar.

I have had five phenomenal children, a great husband and, even though we are separated, we are good friends.

It makes one a better person to have had hardships and to have overcome hardships and not to blame anybody else for your mistakes.

After Bruno Walter, my career went in leaps and bounds. I have had 35 years of a career that is just incredible, and a wonderful time all over the world.

Perhaps, once I am gone, the one thing I might be remembered for is having sung a great deal of Mahler with a great many phenomenal conductors. It is wonderful music, very spiritual.

Singing beautiful melodies is one thing, but to deliver the text so that the people understand it, even in a foreign language, has to be worked at very hard.

Another turn in my life happened when I took on the Canada Council.

I have been all over the world. I have met some wonderful people, lots of them very simple, whom nobody will ever hear about, but who have been fabulous to me.

I have three grandchildren and am hoping for 20.

Hope had only revealed herself to him when he was immersed in darkness

As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.

My drummer, bass player, and guitar player sing backgrounds. They play and sing. I can sing all the harmonies, but I can't do it alone.

It is not abstinence from pleasures that is best, but mastery over them without being worsted.

Troops would never be deficient in courage, if they could only know how deficient in it their enemies were.

One lawyer told me that he never drinks water or eats in front of the jury because they can't do either one.

Profit is a signal that valuable services are being rendered to people on a voluntary basis.

And I think because there is an essence of me that cares about other people and what other people think then that then makes me seem very sweet and polite.

My parents wanted me to go to law school.

He is a thermostat leader, not a thermometer...He does not react to the environment he's in. He changes every environment he's in.