"As a very small child I found recorded noise and the solitary singer beneath the spotlight so dramatic and so brave... walking the plank... willingly... It was sink or swim. The very notion of standing there, alone, I found beautiful."
"We are touched inexplicably by the voice, the music, the sound, the words, the faces, the moment … and it stays with you until the day you die. You may temporarily go off certain songs and certain singers, but you return to them later on."
"When you, as the listener, are hit by a certain emotional quality, that quality … or the memory of it … doesn’t ever leave you because a genuinely poetic moment in life is not very frequent. You do not need to understand anything at all about musical structures because your heart is telling you that what you are hearing is magnificent."
"Of all of life’s vanities, the singing voice reveals the most."
“I am primarily interested in the singing voice. It reveals everything about a person, doesn’t it? Nasty people have nasty voices, and loving people have loving voices. When someone sings, you can clearly assess whether or not he is kind or considerate, or whether he’s the opposite. Singing is a bit like being naked — there’s nowhere to hide. As soon as someone starts to sing, something different happens to his face, to his mouth, to his eyes, to the way he stands. I’m constantly on the look-out for that singer who will rip me to shreds. Emotionally, of course. Not literally.”
"To sing an emotive song is not a confidence game – you cannot do it unless you feel it. [...] I also disagree with David Byrne when he uses the term ‘musical performance’ because if you have a true and physical need to sing a song then you are not performing. Performance is forced and artificial, and you are either a singer, or else you are... simply ... a costume."
"I honestly don't have the interest in playing an instrument. I always wanted to sing, with nothing at all blocking my path to the audience. An instrument is the perfect thing to hide behind - always busy adjusting pedals, fiddling with amp-settings, looking down, and never directly facing the very audience that you are presumably addressing."