I'm a perfectionist, and I always think that I can do better what I have done, even if it's good.

I was an elementary school teacher.

Am I afraid of high notes? Of course I am afraid. What sane man is not?

Sometime to be called Pavarotti is not always an advantage.

Learning music by reading about it is like making love by mail.

Above all, I am an opera singer. This is how people will remember me.

He wants only to rest and to have a little peace.

The music itself could never take the place of my own passion in life.

I am a very superstitious person.

Why should be elite, music? Excuse me. Music must be for everybody.

I'm a perfectionist, and I always think that I can do better what I have done, even if it's good.

The better voice doesn't mean being a better singer.

If children are not introduced to music at an early age, I believe something fundamental is actually being taken from them.

You don't need any brains to listen to music.

The rivalry is with ourself. I try to be better than is possible. I fight against myself, not against the other.

I am a tenor buff. I hear myself.

I want to be famous everywhere.

Opera is a beautiful and important diversion for me.

For me, music making is the most joyful activity possible, the most perfect expression of any emotion.

It is a very honest world, our work. I think you cannot fake anything.

People have a right to criticize.

In opera, as with any performing art, to be in great demand and to command high fees you must be good of course, but you must also be famous. The two are different things.

Opera is one of the most important art forms. It should be listened to and appreciated by everyone.

It is so important for people at a young age to be invited to embrace classical music and opera.

I want to reach as many people as possible with the message of music, of wonderful opera.

There is no prodigy in our profession. If you see all the great singer of the past, none of them are.

If you see me once, you cannot confuse me with another.

I am open to everything.

The reason fat people are happy is that the nerves are well protected.

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.

Horse riding is a perfect comparison with singing.You must know where the double fences are.

The reason fat people are happy is that their nerves are well protected.

Anthropology has been compared to a great region, marked out indeed as within the sphere of influence of science, but unsettled and for the most part unsubdued. Like all such hinterland sciences, it is a happy hunting-ground for adventurers.

You see, I had been riding with the storm clouds, and had come to earth as rain, and it was drought that I had killed with the power that the Six Grandfathers gave me.

If you're filming somebody doing something they really want to do, you're probably not very high on their list of problems to deal with. You see James Carville on the phone - he's like that whether you have a camera or not. He isn't doing it just for you, and that's hard to explain.

People say I'm a one-note actor, but the way I figure it, those other guys are just looking for that one right note.

We keep secrets from ourselves that all along we know.

I think my style is probably more of a classic look.

Inspiration is some mysterious blessing which happens when the wheels are turning smoothly.

It's not the end of the world if I can't get a film job, or if a movie doesn't turn out well - even though I don't like it when that happens. There are other things I enjoy doing, and I involve myself in them.

The ideal is not believing in, but believing from.

When I was growing up, yearning with my pals to be a track star, one of our heroes was Bruce Jenner. He won a gold medal at the 1976 Olympics in the decathlon, and he adorned our Wheaties boxes. We all wanted to be Bruce Jenner.

Get-rich-quick schemes are for the lazy & unambitious. Respect your dreams enough to pay the full price for them.

I usually only play with very close friends.

Cities may now bulldoze private citizens' homes, farms and small businesses to make way for shopping malls or other developments.

Hindsight is illuminating but not always what we want to see.

My uncle and my grandfather both worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

A sparkling house is a fine thing if the children aren't robbed of their luster in keeping it that way.

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.