Jessye Norman Quotes

Author Image

Jessye Norman

Profession : Musician

Birth : September 15, 1945

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

Jessye Norman

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.

Jessye Norman

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

Jessye Norman

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.

Jessye Norman

I think that, certainly, most of my operatic roles are in German. I think it happened because, of course, I was lucky in that I was invited to sing, first of all, my operatic debut in Berlin at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, which was West Berlin at the time.

Jessye Norman

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.

Jessye Norman

I am the proud and humble recipient of more than 30 honorary doctorate degrees.

Jessye Norman

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.

Jessye Norman

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.

Jessye Norman

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.

Jessye Norman

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.

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.

Jessye Norman

I think that it is expansive for the mind, for the fantasy of children and grownups alike, to understand that the world is huge. There is so much in the world to experience, and the odds are so essential to life.

Jessye Norman

'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.

Jessye Norman

I enjoy reading about the lives of musicians, and find many similarities in their ideas of preparation and their utter devotion to this great, eternal language: music.

Jessye Norman

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.

Jessye Norman

There is a lot of propaganda about opera singers not being able to act. That's not necessarily true and hasn't been true for a very long time. And certainly there were those instances when singers were told they need to fit into a certain size dress. Of course, women. Men? They just make the costume bigger.

Jessye Norman

I'm a sloucher, sort of, when nobody's looking.

Jessye Norman

I feel comfortable singing in the great cathedrals of the world because I spent so much time as a child singing in church. And it isn't very different. Of course, nothing looks quite like Notre Dame de Paris.

Jessye Norman

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.

Jessye Norman