When you have a movie about people landing from planet Neptune, you suspend disbelief. I totally get it. But I like doing things that happen in real life.

Inspired by the purse rather than the soul, the mercenary side fairly screams in many of the works put out by every day American publishers.

The real artist has no idea that he is sacrificing himself for art. He does “what he does for one reason and one reason only-he can't help doing it”

Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works.

French is, in many ways, more difficult for an English-speaking person to sing. It is so full of complex and trying vowels. It requires the utmost subtlety.

When the student has her voice under complete control, it is safe to take up the lyric repertoire of Mendelssohn, Old English Songs, etc. How simple and charming they are!

The sincerity of the art worker must permeate the song as naturally as the green leaves break through the dead branches in springtime.

Vocal study before age 20 is likely to be injurious, though some survive it in the hands of very careful and understanding teachers.

A student will send me an urgent appeal to hear her, saying she is poor and wants my advice as to whether it is worth while to continue her studies. I invariably refuse such requests.

The student who deceives himself into thinking that he is giving his life like an ascetic in the spirit of sacrifice for art, is the victim of a deplorable species of egotism.

We are rich in the quantity of songs rather than in the quality. The singer has to go through hundreds of compositions before he finds one that really says something.

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

Belief creates the actual fact.

What is in one is in the whole, and therefore, ultimately, each soul is responsible for the world.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

America is a great place, speech is free and you're able to expose the fact that you're an idiot.

Delicacy is to love what grace is to beauty.

Everything God does is purposeful. And since God is in each of us, each of us has a purpose.

Evaluate what you want - because what gets measured, gets produced.

I think it's quite painfully obvious when someone's practicing through an amp, as opposed to someone who's really laying down some stuff that just happens to be fast.

With television, the image has been degenerated, no question. With the internet, commercials... people are much too cynical about image. It's stale. And all over the world, not just America.