Jessye Norman's Quotes

A person has the right, and I think the responsibility, to develop all of their talents.

I am grateful that my horizons were not narrowed at the outset.

I have a particular affliction. I am unable to say a word I can't spell.

I like so many different kinds of music that I've never allowed myself the limitations of one particular range.

I walk an 11-minute mile without huffing and puffing.

I want to keep learning, keep exploring, keep doing more.

I want to sing more in Spanish. I want to sing the songs of Granados; the songs of Montsalvatge. To do things that truly I've not done before.

I was given a stethoscope in a child's 'doctor's bag' at about age six and I loved it! One could hear the heart beating through that plastic toy.

I'm dying always.

It is still more likely that a woman's power would be seen as aggression, and a man's power would be seen as assertion.

One needs more than ambition and talent to make a success of anything, really. There must be love and a vocation.

Problems arise in that one has to find a balance between what people need from you and what you need for yourself.

There has never been a time when I was not committed to, involved in, or caring of, the social and political issues of my world.

As for my voice, it cannot be categorised - and I like it that way, because I sing things that would be considered in the dramatic, mezzo or spinto range.

If you send up a weather vane or put your thumb up in the air every time you want to do something different, to find out what people are going to think about it, you're going to limit yourself. That's a very strange way to live.

There's no anger ever in a spiritual. There's always the dream of a hope of a better day coming. That God understands the troubles that I'm experiencing.