I rather like the idea of defying death.

I don't want death to suddenly interrupt what I'm doing. I don't like the idea of death at all.

Not the challenges necessarily, but the way in which you get ready because your technique has improved over the years and you perhaps know how to be more economical than perhaps you used to be when you tried to work perhaps too hard.

I want to paint Montreal as a rather fantastic city, which it was, because nobody knows today what it was like. And I'm one of the last survivors, or rapidly becoming one.

In Stratford you either turn into an alcoholic or you better write.

History remembers most what you did last.

I buried myself so much in the classics that I felt, "Well now, I've played all the big parts, whether badly or goodly, I don't give a damn, but at least I've played them all. Now, let's start again. Let's start the whole career again." And it makes you feel like you're beginning again, it really does.