I lived through the garbage. I might as well dine on the caviar.
Interpretation
Embracing life's experiences, both good and bad, can lead to appreciation and enjoyment of better moments.
Beverly Sillsβ quote highlights the resilience and transformation of an individual who has experienced hardship and adversity ('the garbage') and has earned the right to savor the finer things in life ('the caviar'). It suggests that overcoming difficulties enriches one's capacity to value and enjoy the positives that life offers.
In practice
During a motivational talk about overcoming hardship, one might say, 'As Beverly Sills wisely noted, I might as well dine on the caviar.'
I began by listening to my mother's collection of Amelita Galli-Curci and Lily Pons records, and then was taken (at age eight) to hear Pons at a Met performance of Lakme. It was at that moment that I decided to become an opera star. Not just an opera singer, but an opera star!
I was always the first person in the theater all the time. If it was an eight-o'clock curtain, I was here at five-thirty, and it wasn't that I needed to vocalize, because I was all warmed up. I couldn't wait for it to begin.
A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.
There is no shortcut to anyplace worth going.
I had found a kind of serenity, a new maturity. I didn't feel better or stronger than anyone else but it seemed no longer important whether everyone loved me or not - more important now was for me to love them. Feeling that way turns your whole life around; living becomes the act of giving.
Whimsy doesn't care if you are the driver or the passenger; all that matters is that you are on your way.
Not often, but every once in a while, God brings us to a major turning point β a great crossroads in our life.
You don't know. When I'm out there at night I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and fingernails, everything, it's like I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark - I'm on fire almost - I'm burning away into nothing - but it doesn't matter because I know exactly who I am.
Open-faced sandwiches take risks and live big and smile with all their teeth. These are the people I want to be around.
You can't be afraid of getting old. Old is good, if you're gathering in life. Our band is good at understanding that equation.
I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.
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