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

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.

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 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.

Books will never die out as long as there are people around.

Sin is a fact of life. It is the way we deal with it that changes ours.

Believe when you are most unhappy that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain life is not in vain.

I've always been a big supporter of the Surfrider Foundation. I started my own foundation, Rob Machado Foundation, which focuses on environmental education for the little people of the world.

The irrevocable Hand That opes the year's fair gate, doth ope and shut The portals of our earthly destinies; We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors Close after us, for ever.

You are being used as cannon fodder for U.S. imperialism.

The corporation is an out-of-control Frankenstein.

I'm a victim of maybe circumstances, but look at how it worked out?

But Marge, what if we chose the wrong religion? Each week we just make God madder and madder.

This [2016] election was lost because a total of 70,000 people - out of 120-130 million votes - in the Rust belt, but as a result America is in the calamity.