Quotes by Maureen Forrester

• I have had five phenomenal children, a great husband and, even though we are separated, we are good friends.
• Another turn in my life happened when I took on the Canada Council.
• By the time I was four, I would walk around the corner and wait at a local streetcar stop, get on the streetcar with somebody who looked like they could be my mother and go to the end of the line.
• I had a wonderful childhood, but I was a wanderer from year one.
• I have been all over the world. I have met some wonderful people, lots of them very simple, whom nobody will ever hear about, but who have been fabulous to me.
• I have three grandchildren and am hoping for 20.
• Young people can get very discouraged and get hooked on drugs or on alcohol because of problems they perceive as insurmountable. It is important that they realize a mistake need not ruin their future, but they must also know that not everything in life is a bed of roses.
• That is what I always tell service clubs: If you hear of somebody who is very young and talented, pick them up and give them that little assistance to make sure that they get to the professional stage.
• After Bruno Walter, my career went in leaps and bounds. I have had 35 years of a career that is just incredible, and a wonderful time all over the world.
• Perhaps, once I am gone, the one thing I might be remembered for is having sung a great deal of Mahler with a great many phenomenal conductors. It is wonderful music, very spiritual.
• My book has a lot of parts of my life that people don't know about.
• Making a living in the arts, though, creates so many jobs for other people.
• It makes one a better person to have had hardships and to have overcome hardships and not to blame anybody else for your mistakes.
• If somebody asks me to recommend a young, good singer, I always do.
• I was born in Montreal and came from a lower-middle-class family.
• I thought I should go to New York because it was the place to go to study. I went and tried to get an application from the Juilliard School but they wouldn't even give me one because I didn't have my high school graduation.
• Singing beautiful melodies is one thing, but to deliver the text so that the people understand it, even in a foreign language, has to be worked at very hard.