A Quote by Sinclair Lewis

Funny how the world always praises its opera-singers so much and pays 'em so well and then starves its shoemakers, and yet it needs good shoes so much more than it needs opera--or war or fiction.

Sinclair Lewis

Quote Topics

Always Fiction Funny Good Good Shoes How More Much Needs Opera Pays Shoes Singers Than Then War Well World

Quote Author

Sinclair Lewis
American - Writer
February 7, 1885 - January 10, 1951

I think it was just an opera. Now, you go to opera, you expect to see and hear what the opera is. So, it was Catfish Row. It was singers. Marvelous voices. It didn't make no difference what color they were

Cab Calloway

I originally wanted to be an opera singer. I studied classical voice at the University of Washington but soon realised I didn't have the instrument or the discipline. The road for opera singers is more difficult than for actors.

Kyle MacLachlan

Opera needs a major makeover; the large opera houses are too in thrall to their conservative patrons.

Robert Lepage

I studied with Stella Adler and I didn't like the representational aspect of most opera singers. Most of the opera singers had not a false, but over theatrical way of presenting.

Robert Davi

Opera? Just what the world needs: more fat women screaming.

Peter Boyle

I was going to be a singer. If I hadn't been in my profession, I was going to be an Opera singer. That's from a young kid. I had all these records from all those famous Opera singers. I wanted to be an Opera singer - that was my whole thing and physical fitness got in the way, thank God.

Jack LaLanne

The number of opera houses around the world and the high attendance rates show that opera an art form that is more popular than ever.

Bruce Beresford

That was my way, and I also use the music after five years, I started hearing opera, opera, it was very good instrument to keep the spirit very strong because you feel like you are yourself singing opera, and I used to hear a lot of opera, they send me tapes.

Mordechai Vanunu

We all know the principle that the polluter pays? Well one day I got to wondering why it is that the polluter seems to get away with it quite so often! Then it occurred to me that if the polluter is going to pay, somebody needs to tell him how much. The proper valuation of natural capital will enable us to say how much.

Barry Gardiner

I never breathe through the nose, not when I'm singing. In the opera, you don't have so much time. That's fine at the beginning of an opera or after somebody else has been doing an aria, and you want to get a good fresh start.

Beverly Sills

The very beautiful and very touching thing about opera singers is they are very willing to do whatever you want. Unlike actors, who constantly want to know why they're doing something, opera singers will sort of follow you into the fires of hell.

Simon McBurney

I've always loved opera; it never occurred to me that I would write a proper libretto. One of my closest friends is a composer, Paul Moravec, and a few years ago, Paul and I were at lunch, and I said to him, "you really have to write an opera." So, he says very casually to me, "I'll do it if you write the libretto." Well, little did I know that the within a couple of years we would end up getting a commission from the Santa Fe Opera to write an opera together, "The Letter," which turned out to be the most successful commissioned opera in the history of the Santa Fe Opera.

Terry Teachout

We tend to forget that in those days before the Internet and HBO and Imax and 3-D cinema, opera was the thing. Opera and theatre. If you were a man of the world and you mingled among the happy few, you would be at the opera.

Robert Lepage

I have so much respect for the big opera singers that I never dare to say I'm a singer.