“I prepare myself for rehearsals like I would for marriage.”

I was always too mature for my age – and not very happy. I had no young friends. I wish I could go back to those days. If I could only live it all again, how I would play and enjoy other girls. What a fool I was.

Don’t talk to me about rules, dear. Wherever I stay I make the goddam rules.

I will always be as difficult as necessary to achieve the best.

I will not be sued! I have the voice of an angel!

ART is domination. It’s making people think that for that precise moment in time there is only one way, one voice. Yours.

I want to be a mature artist with a different kind of thinking.

The public is a monster and that is why I am not eager to return to the stage.

Paris dictates fashion to the whole world.

There must be a law against forcing children to perform at an early age. Children should have a wonderful childhood. They should not be given too much responsibility.

I don’t know what happens to me on stage. Something else seems to take over.

On stage, I am in the dark.

An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I’ve left the opera house.

Real friends are very special, but you have to be careful because sometimes you have a friend and you think they are made of rock, then suddenly you realise they’re only made of sand.

Don’t come to me with your troubles. I have to work for my money and you are young enough to work too. If you can’t make enough money to live on you can jump out of the window or drown yourself.

I belong to the givers. I want to give a little happiness even if I haven’t had much for myself. Music has enriched my life and, hopefully – through me, a little – the public’s. If anyone left an opera house feeling more happy and at peace, I achieved my purpose.

Some say I have a beautiful voice, some say I have not. It is a matter of opinion. All I can say, those who don’t like it shouldn’t come to hear me.

You would think that a rock star being married to a super-model would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.

No marriage can survive without forgiveness. Marriage is a long term commitment between two sinners.

Very well, I will marry you if you promise not to make me eat eggplant.

A lot of success in life and business comes from knowing what you want to avoid: early death, a bad marriage, etc.

Social media, to me, is like a marriage. You have to foster it and take care of it and commit to it. And you have to understand your partner.

Yes: but aren’t love and marriage notoriously synonymous in the minds of most women? Certainly very few men get the first without promising the second: love, that is–if it’s just a matter of spreading her legs, almost any woman will do that for nothing.

I think the best day will be when we no longer talk about being gay or straight. It’s not a gay wedding, it’s just a wedding. It’s not a gay marriage, it’s just a marriage.

Each woman who lives in the light of eternity can fulfill her vocation, no matter if it is in marriage, in a religious order, or in a worldly profession.