Everybody's a work in progress. I'm a work in progress. I mean, I've never arrived. I'm still learning all the time.

My philosophy is that the people around us are there doing as much work if not more work behind the scenes and they're the last people you would ever be unkind to, so I hope I'm not a diva off stage.

One of my timesaving habits is to save all of my magazines and junk mail for airplane trips. I walk on the plane with a very heavy bundle, but by the time the trip is over, it can all be thrown away.

Your brain has a music room, and evolution would not have gone to the trouble of designing that if it didn't have some benefits. So, that suggests to me that we and our ancestors have had music as a central part of our experience for eons. And we're just beginning to understand how that might be. I think that's fascinating.

I learned so many roles so quickly as a young singer, I thought it was time to come back to them and make them better - deeper, more nuanced.

A lot of performers don't want to leave the circuit, the European opera house circuit, partly because most singers don't sing many concerts, or at least not while they are in their prime.

Every singer eventually gets around to a Christmas disc.