I did roles that I hated, and there were roles that were detrimental to my acting ability. There were roles that I was always doing that were always the comic relief... it was destroying my soul.

On a morning from a Bogart movie, in a country where they turn back time. You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre, contemplating a crime. She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain. Don't bother asking for explanations, she'll just tell you that she came in the year of the cat.

It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.

To have the ability to withdraw into oneself and forget everything around one when one is creating - What, I think is the only requirement for being able to bring forth something beautiful. The whole thing is - a mystery.

Of all the items on the menu, soup is that which exacts the most delicate perfection and the strictest attention.

There is a lot of propaganda about opera singers not being able to act. That's not necessarily true and hasn't been true for a very long time. And certainly there were those instances when singers were told they need to fit into a certain size dress. Of course, women. Men? They just make the costume bigger.