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

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!

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.

Somehow in all this grief I found joy. Sharing art with you has made me whole again. And again.

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.

I knew nothing about martial arts. The coach told me I was talented with learning martial arts, and put me in a school. Three years later I got my first championship in China.

When we share art we extend a hand. We hold a mirror. We adjust our focus. We hold each other. We weave a collaborative story. Together.

For work, I wear art; in real life, I wear clothes.

Tenderness can be just as abstract as insanity.

Reserve the language of sculpture for the art of sculpture. Lest you confuse beauty with the shape of a jaw or art with the size of a stomach.

We are not trapped in what the science of management says we can do. We are capable of doing what the art of leadership says is possible.