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

When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I’m slipping.

My poor sight gives me an advantage. I can’t see the people in the audience who are scratching their heads while I am lost in my role and giving everything I have to the drama.

I would not kill my enemies, but I will make them get down on their knees. I will, I can, I must.

I am not an angel and do not pretend to be. That is not one of my roles. But I am not a devil, either. I am a woman and a serious artist, and I would like so to be judged.

I don’t need the money, dear. I work for art.

Only when I was singing did I feel loved.

I cannot switch my voice. My voice is not like an elevator going up and down.

When the curtain rises, the only thing that speaks is courage.

You are born an artist or you are not. And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks. The artist is always there.

That is the difference between good teachers and great teachers: good teachers make the best of a pupil’s means; great teachers foresee a pupil’s ends.

Love is so much better when you are not married.

It’s a terrible thing to go through life thinking that you have a rock on your side when you haven’t.

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!

When I look at someone’s face, I look beyond that face and into the cellular memory in my heart that says, ‘Finally you and I have met again. And now we must find out why’.

To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

If you believe in a God who controls the big things, you have to believe in a God who controls the little things. It is we, of course, to whom things look ‘little’ or ‘big’.

I love dressing up and doing the red carpet every once in a while, but I am very much a jeans kinda girl, so it’s all a little embarrassing for me.

If you’re given a choice between money and sex appeal, take the money. As you get older, the money will become your sex appeal.

I’m never satisfied with the way I look.

When I was a kid, I’d spray paint my hair, cut clothes up.

And you can’t outrun something you can’t see.