I lived through the garbage. I might as well dine on the caviar.
Interpretation
Embracing life's experiences, both good and bad, can lead to appreciation and enjoyment of better moments.
Beverly Sillsβ quote highlights the resilience and transformation of an individual who has experienced hardship and adversity ('the garbage') and has earned the right to savor the finer things in life ('the caviar'). It suggests that overcoming difficulties enriches one's capacity to value and enjoy the positives that life offers.
In practice
During a motivational talk about overcoming hardship, one might say, 'As Beverly Sills wisely noted, I might as well dine on the caviar.'
I began by listening to my mother's collection of Amelita Galli-Curci and Lily Pons records, and then was taken (at age eight) to hear Pons at a Met performance of Lakme. It was at that moment that I decided to become an opera star. Not just an opera singer, but an opera star!
I was always the first person in the theater all the time. If it was an eight-o'clock curtain, I was here at five-thirty, and it wasn't that I needed to vocalize, because I was all warmed up. I couldn't wait for it to begin.
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.
There is no shortcut to anyplace worth going.
I had found a kind of serenity, a new maturity. 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.
Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.
We do not change as we grow up. The difference between the child and the adult is that the former doesn't know who he is and the latter does.
Nothing is here to stay_x000D_ _x000D_ Everything has to begin and end_x000D_ _x000D_ A ship in a bottle won't sail_x000D_ _x000D_ All we can do is dream that the wind will blow us across the water_x000D_ _x000D_ A ship in a bottle set sail
I can no more think of my own life without thinking of wine and wines and where they grew for me and why I drank them when I did and why I picked the grapes and where I opened the oldest procurable bottles, and all that, than I can remember living before I breathed.
That's the first thing you learn when you busk in the New York City subways: you immediately join the ranks of the marginalized, the unhinged prophets, the Christian shouters, the Hare Krishnas, the Jehovah's witnesses, the father-and-daughter kitaro team, the violinists playing for their sickly wives.
I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12 and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but also my work as well.
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