I never step upon a stage without asking myself whether I will succeed in finishing the opera. The fact is that a conscientious singer is never sure of himself or of anything. He is ever in the hands of Destiny.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the uncertainty and pressure artists face before performing.
Enrico Caruso expresses the inherent anxiety that comes with being a performer, particularly the fear of not delivering a successful performance. He acknowledges that no matter how experienced an artist may be, the outcome is ultimately unpredictable and reliant on various external factors, hinting at the interplay between talent and fate in the world of art.
In practice
During a speech at a performing arts festival.
To become a singer requires work, work, and again, work! It need not be in any special corner of the earth; there is no one spot that will do more for you than other places. It doesn't matter so much where you are if you have intelligence and a good ear.
It is too bad that the public expects from me, always, perfection which it is impossible for me always to attain. I am not a machine. I am a human being.
It was he who impressed, time and again, the necessity of singing as nature intended, and - I remember - he constantly warned, don't let the public know that you work. So I went slowly. I never forced the voice.
I think of myself as a serious professor who, during the weekend, writes novels.
I certainly agree that putting everything into little genres is counterproductive. You're not going to get too many surprises if you only focus on the stuff that fits inside the box that you know.
Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.
The actual world, not some fantastic structure that has nothing to do with reality, must provide the material for modern poetry.
I don't need drugs. I am drugs.
It is not architectural achievement that makes the structures of earlier times seem to us so full of significance but the circumstance that antique temples, Roman basilicas, and even the cathedrals of the Middle Ages are not the works of single personalities but creations of entire epochs.
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