I'm not rich and maybe I'll never be rich. Money is useful - yes - but I don't worship it.
The music itself could never take the place of my own passion in life.
People think I'm disciplined. It is not discipline. It is devotion. There is a great difference.
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.
When I'm about to train a new opera, I first listen to how Jussi Björling did it. His voice was unique and it's his path that I want to follow. I would more than anything else wish that people compared me with Jussi Björling. It's like so I'm striving to sing.
I think a life in music is a life beautifully spent, and this is what I have devoted my life to.
The rivalry is with ourself. I try to be better than is possible. I fight against myself, not against the other.
I write best about two things, which is evident from the cover of So Far Gone: the constant quest to understand love and money.
So many dancers feel that what they look like is more important than who they are. This is a real danger for dancers who focus for years on appearances and think of themselves as merely a body. The choreographer can't work with them in the realm of ideas. It's a huge problem if they haven't been connecting internally. If they've decided that what's inside is of little value, they can only try to approximate some kind of look.
Ironically enough, in the same way that fear brings to pass what one is afraid of, likewise a forced intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes. . . Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself.
I'm not sure we need half a billion dollars for women's health issues.