I am grateful that my horizons were not narrowed at the outset.

I'm dying always.

If you send up a weather vane or put your thumb up in the air every time you want to do something different, to find out what people are going to think about it, you're going to limit yourself. That's a very strange way to live.

I am grateful that my horizons were not narrowed at the outset.

Problems arise in that one has to find a balance between what people need from you and what you need for yourself.

I have a particular affliction. I am unable to say a word I can't spell.

'Swan,' by Mary Oliver. Poems and prose. Reading from this book is as if visiting a very wise friend. There is wisdom and welcoming kindness on every page.

A person has the right, and I think the responsibility, to develop all of their talents.

Growing up in Augusta in such a protected and loving community is something that I really enjoy talking about. I love talking about - even though I grew up, of course, in the time of segregated schools: Brown vs. Board of Education came along after I was already in first grade.

I am deeply spiritual; I revel in those things that make for good - the things that we can do to shed a little light, to help place an oft-dissonant universe back in tune with itself... Long live art, long live friendship, long live the joy of life!

I feel comfortable singing in the great cathedrals of the world because I spent so much time as a child singing in church. And it isn't very different. Of course, nothing looks quite like Notre Dame de Paris.

I have enjoyed most particularly reading the correspondence between Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. The genuine friendship, competitiveness and support that thread through their communications are life lessons for us all.

I knew that I was loved. And that's such an important thing. And, of course, at such an early age, you take it for granted. Of course your parents love you. Of course Mrs. Hubert across the street loves you and your godmother loves you and your grandparents love you.

I like so many different kinds of music that I've never allowed myself the limitations of one particular range.

I read everything. I'll read a John Grisham novel, I'll sit and read a whole book of poems by Maya Angelou, or I'll just read some Mary Oliver - this is a book that was given to me for Christmas. No particular genre. And I read in French, and I read in German, and I read in English. I love to see how other people use language.

I try to frighten my very young colleagues into studying and understanding their voices before they attempt things that are beyond them. It's wise to take gymnastics and swimming to strengthen the body, because people don't realise what an athletic undertaking singing actually is.

I want to keep learning, keep exploring, keep doing more.

I want to sing more in Spanish. I want to sing the songs of Granados; the songs of Montsalvatge. To do things that truly I've not done before.

I was given a stethoscope in a child's 'doctor's bag' at about age six and I loved it! One could hear the heart beating through that plastic toy.

I wasn't born Austrian; I wasn't born German. My roots are from Africa, and I do not have any reason for not wanting to celebrate that. Every time that I can, I like to kind of mention it, you know, just to keep people sort of knowing exactly what's going on. My French is pretty good, but I'm still African, thank you very much.

It is still more likely that a woman's power would be seen as aggression, and a man's power would be seen as assertion.

It takes a caring community to raise a child that will be a whole person and a contributing citizen.

One has to draw upon one's own musical thoughts and one's own musical acumen, and not to be afraid to let that come into one's work. Perhaps that comes with more experience, but perhaps it also comes with daring, and believing that you should.

One needs more than ambition and talent to make a success of anything, really. There must be love and a vocation.

One of the reasons that I take such joy in being a trustee of the New York Public Library is the love of reading that I found as a child in the Saturday morning library events for preschoolers and first and second graders as I was growing up in Augusta, GA.

There has never been a time when I was not committed to, involved in, or caring of, the social and political issues of my world.

There is a lot of propaganda about opera singers not being able to act. That's not necessarily true and hasn't been true for a very long time. And certainly there were those instances when singers were told they need to fit into a certain size dress. Of course, women. Men? They just make the costume bigger.

This independent report clearly indicates that while we may differ among ourselves in government about what to spend money on, we have one of the most reliable and non-political processes for agreeing on how much money there is. We don't play games with the numbers.

European nations began World War I with a glamorous vision of war, only to be psychologically shattered by the realities of the trenches. The experience changed the way people referred to the glamour of battle; they treated it no longer as a positive quality but as a dangerous illusion.

I did a walk in 1973 illegally in the northern side of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

Weezer's 'El Scorcho.' I'm in a '90s cover band called 'Straight 2 Video' with members of the crew from 'The Vampire Diaries,' and we played this song at our wrap party. I grin from ear to ear every time I scream this song in my car.

Only Congress has the authority to adequately and holistically address our broken immigration system.

The world is the mirror of myself dying.

It sounds so nerdy and pathetic, but what I always do on Sunday afternoon is bring my inbox down to zero, which is so sad. But e-mail has become like homework for adults. I'll have 141 messages from people who will be offended if I don't write back.

It's nice to have money, but the first thing I did with money was buy my father a snow-blower, because my job was to shovel snow, and I wasn't there to do it any more, so I was able to buy him a blower.

I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people.

For the kind of thing that we were showing, the budget was sufficient. As we were speaking of in Haiti, we had not done that before in exactly this form and we had to have costumes for it.

Anti-Semitism is the rumour about the Jews.

As long as it's making you happy and you're enjoying it, then you should never stop writing music. Whether it's going to take you somewhere, viewed by other people, or it's literally you in a bedroom at home, it should be something that you do for yourself.

The truth is that there is almost nothing as tiresome as unwanted love.

Youre going to have to let it hurt. Let it suck. The harder you work the better you will look. Your appearance isnt parallel to how heavy you lift its parallel to how hard you work.

Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear.

For me, the show must go on - it doesn't matter how ill you are, you get on and do it.

A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to stick in his mouth.

No one is ever ordinary.

The perfect woman, you see is a working woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who uses her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others.

The Veteran's History Project, a nationwide volunteer effort to collect oral histories from America's war veterans, provides an avenue to do just that. Now in its fifth year, the Project has collected more than 40,000 individual stories.

My mind is always racing, and always going and always working, and it's a gift and a curse.

I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I'm praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I'm grateful that I'm heard.