I never step upon a stage without asking myself whether I will succeed in finishing the opera. The fact is that a conscientious singer is never sure of himself or of anything. He is ever in the hands of Destiny.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the uncertainty and pressure artists face before performing.
Enrico Caruso expresses the inherent anxiety that comes with being a performer, particularly the fear of not delivering a successful performance. He acknowledges that no matter how experienced an artist may be, the outcome is ultimately unpredictable and reliant on various external factors, hinting at the interplay between talent and fate in the world of art.
In practice
During a speech at a performing arts festival.
To become a singer requires work, work, and again, work! It need not be in any special corner of the earth; there is no one spot that will do more for you than other places. It doesn't matter so much where you are if you have intelligence and a good ear.
It is too bad that the public expects from me, always, perfection which it is impossible for me always to attain. I am not a machine. I am a human being.
It was he who impressed, time and again, the necessity of singing as nature intended, and - I remember - he constantly warned, don't let the public know that you work. So I went slowly. I never forced the voice.
When you're writing a novel, you spend four years sitting in your basement and a year waiting for the book to come out and then you get the feedback. When you do work online, the moment you're finished making it, people start responding to it which is really fun and allows for a kind of community development you just can't have in novels.
I wrote 'My Name is Red' just to remember painting, where the hand does it before the intellect. When I'm captive to it, I'm a happier person. Kierkegaard tells us that a happy person is someone who lives in the present; the unhappy person, someone who lives either in the past or the future.
The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience - anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form.
I hate being called poet/dramatist/translator/director. 'Poet' covers it all for me.
Dressing well is a form of good manners.
Beauty when unadorned is adorned the most.
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