Jessye Norman Quotes & Sayings (Page 5)

“I wasn't born Austrian; I wasn't born German. My roots are from Africa, and I do not have any reason for not wanting to celebrate that. Every time that I can, I like to kind of mention it, you know, just to keep people sort of knowing exactly what's going on. My French is pretty good, but I'm still African, thank you very much.”

“I would like to see more African-American singers as part of our opera companies. If you take music and the arts out of the public schools, then you're going to lose a lot of people that you might have discovered were talented, very early.”

“My parents said to us, practically on a daily basis, that we were as good as anyone else on this earth, and that we would simply have to work harder in order to show that.”

“The high notes always hard to hit. I mean, one has to understand how high notes even happen. The vocal cords have to vibrate so very, very quickly, and this takes a great deal of physical energy. And it makes perfect sense that it would become more of an effort, perhaps, to make sure that those notes are absolutely where they're supposed to be.”

“There have been occasions - and I think it's very good for any human being that such occasions would be rare - that one would feel that one is a channel, and there have been some occasions when it seemed as though I was standing outside of myself watching and listening to myself sing.”

“We singers have a different level of responsibility from other musicians. We have words that we must convey; we have meanings that we must convey through these lyrics.”