My energy is undiminished. Someone said to me the other day, 'Are you retired?' and I said, 'Well, I'm just trying to prove that I'm not.' There's so many things to do.

I knew that I could be more creative onstage, to state my own case and deliver my own interpretation of the role much more aggressively than in the recording studio.

Opera is for a lifetime, not just a minute.

When I perform Strauss, it is as if the music fits me like a glove. My voice seems to lie in a happy area in this music, which is lyrical and passionate at the same time.

I'm completely in charge of my own life now. Sometimes there's no one there to slap me on the hand and say: 'Stop being so bullish and bossy,' and things like that.

I felt that the studio recording process makes you stand still too long.

The word 'no' is a very good word in a singer's repertoire.

I never had the influence of any other singer in my music, so I sounded like myself all the time.

That's been my sort of aim in life, to never miss an opportunity.

I'm more confident now than I've ever been. As you get older, you have to be.

I grew up in the New Zealand countryside. We didn't have television until I was 14, so sing-alongs were our only entertainment.

If you can't see the assets in you, it will be hard for you to export it to the world. Recognise who you are and the world will recognise you.

She half suspected that he had had been ordered by contract to look mouth-watering at all times. If he hadn't, it was really rude of him to persist in it. It was distracting.

If our vaunted rule of the people does not breed nobler men and women than monarchies have done it must and will inevitably give place to something better.

As the old saw says well: every end does not appear together with its beginning.

Value is what people are willing to pay for it.

Don't go empty handed when going to a temple or to see a spiritual master. Offer something as a symbol of surrender, even if it be a mere flower.

If we all tried to make other people's paths easy, our own feet would have a smooth even place to walk on.

To be rash is to be bold without shame and without skill.

one of the great weaknesses of the women's rights movement over the past two hundred years has been the tendency of its history to disappear, so that it must be resurrected for each new generation.

I don't know, I don't pay attention to critics anyway. They either like me or they don't, you know what I mean? I am too long in the tooth to worry about that.