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.
Our unborn never got to grow, never got to see what's, next, In this world full of countless threats.
I was born inside the movie of my life. The visuals were before me, the audio surrounded me, the plot unfolded inevitably but not necessarily. I don't remember how I got into the movie, but it continues to entertain me.
This means that we have barely disembarked into life, that we've only just now been born, let's not fill our mouths with so many uncertain names, with so many sad labels, with so many pompous letters, with so much yours and mine, with so much signing of papers. I intend to confuse things, to unite them, make them new-born intermingle them, undress them, until the light of the world has the unity of the ocean, a generous wholeness, a fragrance alive and crackling.
On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.
He's worked his entire life and he's never lived a single moment, I mean not a moment, in the real world.
Life is like a very short visit to a toyshop between birth and death.
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