As long as I am given the opportunity to keep performing and keep exploring in whatever medium I'll be happy. As long as I get to spend time with my family I'll be happy. As long as I can write in some form I'll be happy. It is the essential things like that I equate with happiness.

I tell my students it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see who's very far away who's a different color who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.

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.

Touring is tough. You're almost in a haze because you don't really know where you are half the time: You're in a hotel room one moment and the next thing you know you're onstage performing for 60 000 people then you're back on an airplane. It's very hectic and I couldn't do it without my family.

Performing is a profound experience at least for me.

Performing is a profound experience at least for me. It's not as if I sit down and play 'Fire and Rain' by myself just to hear it again. But to offer it up... the energy that it somehow summons live takes me right back and I do get a reconnection to the emotions.

I have such happy memories of performing in a choir and I don't think I'd have got where I am today without all that experience. So my advice to young singers is to either join your school or church's choir or find one in your local area. Choral music at any level teaches you so much about musicianship and blending your voice.

Our lives sometimes depend on computers performing as predicted.

Although my family - parents and sister - all work in the personnel management business their real passion is performing amateur operatic societies and so on.

Performing doesn't turn me on. It's an egomaniac business filled with prima donnas - including this one.

You always want to quit while you are ahead. You don't want to be like a fighter who stays too long in the ring until you're not performing at your best.

If I weren't performing I'd be a beauty editor or a therapist. I love creativity but I also love to help others. My mother was a hairstylist and they listen to everyone's problems - like a beauty therapist!

I came back to performing with a different attitude about performing and myself. I wasn't expecting perfection any more just hoping for an occasional inspiration.

I went to the Performing Arts School and studied classical ballet. That attitude is something that's put into your head. You are never thin enough.

Music makes your soul feel amazing while you're performing it.

Say not that honor is the child of boldness nor believe thou that the hazard of life alone can pay the price of it: it is not to the action that it is due but to the manner of performing it.

I tend to stay up late not because I'm partying but because it's the only time of the day when I'm alone and don't have to be performing.

I like video games but they are very violent. I want to create a video game in which you have to help all the characters who have died in the other games. 'Hey man what are you playing?' 'Super Busy Hospital. Could you leave me alone? I'm performing surgery! This guy got shot in the head like 27 times!'