I once asked my father what he wanted me to be. To my horror, he said, 'sociologist.'
I shoot my big mouth off; it just pops up! I have to learn to edit myself.
The only time I ever really consider retiring is when I get fed up with the press. Which is often.
To be diagnosed with cancer was a frightening thing, and my first reaction was sheer panic, but I was really fortunate that the cancer was caught at such an early stage that I didn't need chemo or radiotherapy. But I know that cancer is a chronic condition, and once you've had it, you're on the list, because it can come back.
The equipment you've got really dictates what you're going to do. When I started touring, there were no monitors, so I had to take the sound from the hall, and of course it was on a delay, so I would sing, and then I would hear it back, but later. It was very weird.
The first opera I went to see was Maria Callas singing 'Tosca'.
I wish people didn't just think of me in the '60s. I'm not any era.
When I found out my mother wanted me to marry a rich man, I instantly didn't want any rich man.
I thought I wanted to go to drama school or university, and that would have been a completely different life. But what got me was the sound, and hearing it. Hearing everything so loud, I loved that back in the studio. I loved that from the very beginning.
I think you have to really, really want to be a film star.
I've got quite a good brain and all that, which I've never had to use in singing at all.
Well, I really didn't enjoy some of the movies I did when I was young.
I'm alive today, I'm well, I'm working, I'm still creative. What more can I say, really?
I'm sick of being self-referential. I don't want to do any more songs that can be accused of being personal.
I never trusted anybody at all. I don't know why it was so hard, I just didn't.
I went to the big Picasso retrospective at the Tate in the sixties, and I think I went to an Andy Warhol retrospective at the Tate in the sixties, too. My mother was very good at taking me to things like that. We lived in Reading, but we went on these cultural trips to London.
