The atmosphere of the theater is my oxygen.

But enough joking. I am singing. This is all my life.

My strength is my enthusiasm.

I was married at 16, a father at 17 and divorced at 18.

To stay at my best, I have to stop talking during the preceding day.

With my personal preparation at the piano, I can afford to hum at half voice.

Let us be clear: I take ten times more money for a concert than for an opera performance.

In the last century, everybody was singing lower.

Should it happen tomorrow, I would fall to my knees to give thanks to God for such a career.

If money was my only motivation, I would organize myself differently.

I have always studied my parts with the orchestral score and not with the piano reduction.

But I won't deprive myself of singing opera as long as my voice follows.

Singing becomes a form of therapy.

The public is a part of my real life.

I feel like a little boy who is constantly offered new toys.

I then realized that I could never be satisfied again with the mere natural charm of my voice, that I had to constantly paint when singing, melting all the colors, expressing reds and blacks that had to be less primary but bursting with subtly colored combinations.

When facing symphonic orchestras which have played some works five thousands times, you have nothing to do.

The press regularly proclaims my ambitions and my financial demands.

Don't you think it astonishing that, at 58, I am still working at improving my career?

Between parts I was too old for and roles that were too overwhelming, out of reach then for my voice. I carved out a niche with the Wagnerian repertoire since I am attracted by its theatrical intensity.

When working with an orchestra, you never spend more than 20 minutes per recording session.

The high note is not the only thing.

I will prove that a great conducting career is expecting me.

The public made me and then encouraged me for many years, and my future even now depends upon it.

Honestly, if the public still wants to hear me in some works, I have to go down a half step.

Young singers are much better educated musically, much better informed, through discs and videos, than I was.

I attended less than two years of Conservatory in Mexico City.

When I was a young man, I was a baritone, very far from possessing the whole range of the tenor then.

It is strange, but nobody is shocked when pop singers make a fortune in the space of two years.

This season, over eight productions, I am presenting four young tenors.

On the other hand, I have devoted so much energy to reach the top that I accept the stress of being there.

The voice collects and translates your bad physical health, your emotional worries, your personal troubles.

I am never wrong when it comes to my possibilities.

We all have a destiny in accordance with the breadth of our shoulders. My shoulders are broad.

I feel at home in an orchestral score.

This circus games aspect has existed since the beginning of my career.

The atmosphere of the theater is my oxygen.

When a young artist is ready, one has to bring him into the limelight.

Every three days on average, I am alone on stage, facing the public.

I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.

To do theater you need to block off a hunk of time.

In a theater, the part is mine and I can control it as I want to. In the movies, I don't have direct contact, and I am fighting technical machinery.

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.

I'm the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.

Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it.

Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through.

I love making people laugh. It's an addiction and it's probably dysfunctional, but I am addicted to it and there's no greater pleasure for me than sitting in a theater and feeling a lot of people losing control of themselves.

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.

Sheer flattery got me into the theater. Flattery always works with me, particularly the flattery of women.