“What is there in life if you do not work? There is only sensation, and there are only a few sensations— you cannot live on them. You can only live on work, by work, through work. How can you live with self-respect if you do not do things as well as lies in you?”

To sing is an expression of your being, a being which is becoming.

First I lost weight, then I lost my voice, and now I’ve lost Onassis.

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.

Well, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I haven’t been a rogue most of my life.

Organizing is an educational process. The best educational process in the union is the picket line and the boycott. You learn about life.

I never smoked a cigar in my life until I was nine.

I have been able to tap into all the negative things that can happen to me throughout my life by numbing myself to the pain so to speak and kind of being able to vent it through my music.

You can’t be afraid of people willing to hurt you, cause if you fear life, then you will never live.

Once you have done with school, you realise that it is just a smaller version of life, and really I have felt that I should have been an adult since I was aged about five.

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one’s history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.