Beverly Sills

"I needed to sing — desperately. My voice poured out more easily because I was no longer singing for anyone's approval; I was beyond caring about the public's reaction, I just wanted to enjoy myself. … I had found a kind of serenity, a new maturity, as a result of my childrens' problems. I didn't feel better or stronger than anyone else but it seemed no longer important whether everyone loved me or not — more important now was for me to love them. Feeling that way turns your whole life around; living becomes the act of giving."

"A happy woman is one who has no cares at all; a cheerful woman is one who has cares but doesn't let them get her down."

"There is a growing strength in women but it's in the forehead, not the forearm. Men will always be attracted to women with nice soft arms and a fleshy bosom."

"Why should I go when it's going so good? … I lived through the garbage. I might as well dine on the caviar."

"So long as it doesn't get to the point where you don't remember whose opera you're listening to, I'm willing to experiment."

"I've always tried to go a step past wherever people expected me to end up. I'm not about to change now."

"My voice had a long, nonstop career. It deserves to be put to bed with quiet and dignity, not yanked out every once in a while to see if it can still do what it used to do. It can't."

"Art is the signature of civilizations."

"I really do believe I can accomplish a great deal with a big grin, I know some people find that disconcerting, but that doesn't matter."

"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."

"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try."

"In youth, we run into difficulties. In old age, difficulties run into us."

"You don't always get what you ask for, but you never get what you don't ask for... unless it's contagious!"

"Christians should never fail to sense the operation of an angelic glory. It forever eclipses the world of demonic powers, as the sun does a candle's light."

"Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality."

"Attachment to spiritual things is... just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else."

"Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance."

"A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment."