I believe that we must maintain pride in the knowledge that the actions we take based on our own decisions and choices as individuals link directly to the magnificent challenge of transforming human history.

As long as I am given the opportunity to keep performing and keep exploring in whatever medium I'll be happy. As long as I get to spend time with my family I'll be happy. As long as I can write in some form I'll be happy. It is the essential things like that I equate with happiness.

Our principles are the springs of our actions. Our actions the springs of our happiness or misery. Too much care therefore cannot be taken in forming our principles.

Power must be used but it must be tempered by soul-searching and the recognition of our human capacity for error. That is the maxim that should inform our approach to every challenge from reforming state government to engaging in foreign affairs.

How true Daddy's words were when he said: all children must look after their own upbringing. Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

I tell my students it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see who's very far away who's a different color who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.

I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again... the future is just going to be a vast conforming suburb of the soul.

In opera as with any performing art to be in great demand and to command high fees you must be good of course but you must also be famous. The two are different things.

Touring is tough. You're almost in a haze because you don't really know where you are half the time: You're in a hotel room one moment and the next thing you know you're onstage performing for 60 000 people then you're back on an airplane. It's very hectic and I couldn't do it without my family.