Top 45 Quotes by 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.

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.

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.

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 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.