I like digging around. I'm a real magpie. I used to raid the old music shops in the early '50s in Paris and Brussels. You could pick up some incredible and often valuable music for almost nothing back then.

I am busy all day long. Never bored - I don't know what the word means.

I'm very fortunate. I've led a charmed life, I think.

The idea is not to have one great singer surrounded by a bunch of nit wits. When the others are good, too, that's when you get something happening in opera.

You can write about other people and their ideas and life without having lived it, but even your perception of that is going to be colored by what you know and what you experience. And this is undeniable.

If you go through life, and you don't find the beauty in an unexpected place, then you really have a sad existence.

Ultimately, education in its real sense is the pursuit of truth. It is an endless journey through knowledge and enlightenment.

Some of our important choices have a time line. If we delay a decision, the opportunity is gone forever. Sometimes our doubts keep us from making a choice that involves change. Thus an opportunity may be missed.