Quotes from Jessye Norman

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.

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.

I read everything. I'll read a John Grisham novel, I'll sit and read a whole book of poems by Maya Angelou, or I'll just read some Mary Oliver - this is a book that was given to me for Christmas. No particular genre. And I read in French, and I read in German, and I read in English. I love to see how other people use language.

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.

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.

It takes a caring community to raise a child that will be a whole person and a contributing citizen.

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.

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

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.

One has to draw upon one's own musical thoughts and one's own musical acumen, and not to be afraid to let that come into one's work. Perhaps that comes with more experience, but perhaps it also comes with daring, and believing that you should.

I didn't think at all as a young child that music would be my profession. It was just something that one did along with going to Brownies or going to church or going to school or anything else that one did in sort of one's very young life.

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

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.

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

Growing up in Augusta in such a protected and loving community is something that I really enjoy talking about. I love talking about - even though I grew up, of course, in the time of segregated schools: Brown vs. Board of Education came along after I was already in first grade.

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

One of the reasons that I take such joy in being a trustee of the New York Public Library is the love of reading that I found as a child in the Saturday morning library events for preschoolers and first and second graders as I was growing up in Augusta, GA.

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

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.

I try to frighten my very young colleagues into studying and understanding their voices before they attempt things that are beyond them. It's wise to take gymnastics and swimming to strengthen the body, because people don't realise what an athletic undertaking singing actually is.

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.

I was given the opportunity to write the kind of book that I wanted to write, rather than one that catalogues where I sang and what I sang and what I wore. I wanted to write a book about an American family, the family that has produced me. The longer I live, the more I realise the incredible support and love we were given as children.

I sing in languages that I speak. So when I'm singing a Schubert song, I know precisely what every word means and, you know, when it was composed and who was the poet and all of that and whether Strauss or Wagner or French Belioz, Duparc or Debussy or whatever.

I have enjoyed most particularly reading the correspondence between Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. The genuine friendship, competitiveness and support that thread through their communications are life lessons for us all.