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

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.

If somebody asks me to recommend a young, good singer, I always do.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

Everything is the way it is because we've all agreed that's the way it is.

Naive people always trying to blame others for their constant heartbreak & failed relationships instead of looking in the mirror & re-evaluating themselves. It's YOU that needs to change.

Thanks to you, Gabs, we just figured out a half dozen ways not to rob the Henley.

Sneakers are not my thing.

I would still give my left ball to write anything as good as OK Computer.

Physically, man is but an atom in space, and a pulsation in time. Spiritually, the entire outward universe receives significance from him, and the scope of his existence stretches beyond the stars.

The more we study nature the grander does she appear. Science, by penetrating her secrets, often shows us the hidden and imposing forces exist where we only see inertia.

A crown should not sit easy on the head.

It's the journey of self, I guess. You start with this kind of loner, outside guy, which a lot of people can relate to, and he goes out into the world.