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.
β When a person is born we rejoice, and when they're married we jubilate, but when they die we try to pretend nothing has happened.
Oh, I know I'll improve. It's just that my life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes now. That's a sentence I read once, and I say it over to comfort myself in these times that try the soul.
The true way to live is to enjoy every moment as it passes, and surely it is in the everyday things around us that the beauty of life lies.
It's strange. You never start out life with the intention of becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat and a thief. Or a liar.
People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they'll go to any length to live longer. But don't think that's the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest.
Hospitalizations in general are blurry. The days are the same, precisely the same. Nothing changes. Life melts down to a simple progression of meals. They become a way of life fairly quickly. You may welcome this transition. It may seem inevitable to you. You have been removed from the world. It is all right, in a way, because there is nothing so sure, so safe, as routine.
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