“Love is so much better when you are not married.”

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.

I prepare myself for rehearsals like I would for marriage.

I have no desire to write my own biography, as long as I have strength and means to do better work.

The start to a better world is the belief that it is possible.

I’m not one of those people that goes into details of my personal life on national TV to get attention. Some things are better left unsaid.

If evolution was worth its salt, it should’ve evolved something better than ‘survival of the fittest.’ I think a better idea would be ‘survival of the wittiest.’ At least, that way, creatures that didn’t survive could’ve died laughing.

If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.

It is not good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge.

Don’t you know I”m still standing better than I ever did. Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid. I’m still standing after all this time.

If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.