Quotes from Tarja Turunen

I'm happy, I'm healthy, I am not looking backwards - I'm only heading towards some kind of dreams of mine and living my dreams.

I'm a workaholic. My listeners, I think, they know me as a workaholic already. But, you know, work is my love.

I listen to classical music when I need to relax. It depends a lot on mood.

Music really makes you keep your feet on the ground. People can really see if you're honest. That is the truth, they really can see through you.

Until the governments don't have a clear law against piracy and the digital downloads are not working worldwide properly, the record industry will keep on suffering.

In the beginning of my career I had to deal with the fact that since I was the only woman in the band, the singer and the face of the band, I obviously got the most of the attention of the public everywhere I went.

I've been requested by hundreds of metal bands to be part of their albums or side projects.

It's incredible how much beauty exists in the world of music and how many artists you can really inspire with your own work.

I could write songs on the beach, but the interior darkness, we have it all. We have it.

With my classical training and coming from a metal band, producers didn't know what to expect. I like to shock people, though.

I've always been very respected as a female singer in metal, or in general as a female singer.

I don't think I'd be healthy if I only were a heavy metal singer.

For me, it is incredible to hear singers in the metal scene telling me I had been their inspiration.

I mean, being a solo artist is very different than being a member of a band. It's absolutely different. The whole situation is very different - situations where you can't really compare, it's so very different. But I found happiness.

Actually, the whole thing of being a solo artist has been such a learning process for me. Since I departed from my previous band, NIGHTWISH, it was the whole beginning of my career, there was stuff in the air. I had to learn so much.

I was not a metal fan.

I go to metal concerts as well as classical concerts, and I love both of them.

I never thought in my whole life of becoming a heavy metal singer, but it just happened because I took the challenge.

In the beginning of my career, I didn't have any female singer in metal to ask for advice, nor have I ever had a role model or a metal singer that could inspire me, because the way I sang was operatic.

Producing a dark Christmas album in the middle of the summer is a very interesting process, especially if you are doing it by the turquoise Caribbean Sea.

I think it's really important to be humble for the music because there is always someone better than you, there is always something new for you to learn for music and you can't be the best in the world. It makes you work very hard.

Sometimes a song can be born in few minutes, if the feeling is right, some other times it can take days.

Gold, we think, is something polished and perfect, sophisticated, a luxury. But in its natural state, it's a raw element.

We go to church every year on Christmas morning.