Jessye Norman

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

“'Swan,' by Mary Oliver. Poems and prose. Reading from this book is as if visiting a very wise friend. There is wisdom and welcoming kindness on every page.”

“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.”

“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 preschoole...”

“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...”

“I love singing jazz. I don't like the idea that classical music should be over here and jazz should be someplace else. It's all wonderful, and we should be open to enjoying it all.”

“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 yourse...”

“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 el...”