About how to sing choral works:
  "The first thing is the character. Then comes nothing, then the notes, and then everything else."
  "It's better to be bad than to be boring."

And later:
  "Psyche is the first in life. All else comes from that."

And later still:
  "If you're not an actor you cannot make music."
  "How you say it is more important that what you say."
  "Live your emotions and feel them; that's the most important thing."
  "What is your aim in this piece? In everything in life, you must have an aim."

About flow and phrasing:
  "Don't go on swimming in the lake, but turn to the river."

About singing loud and soft:
  "If you're only soft, then you cannot be soft."

And later:
  "A man who's only strong is never strong because he is sick."

About singing (in the Haydn mass) "Et expecto, et expecto", think about what it means to repeat something when you're speaking, as in:
  "Give me a beer...GIVE ME A BEER!!!"

And later:
  "Say something the second time for emphasis".
  "I live on exaggerations."

About singing "mor-to-o-rum" after "re-sur-rec-ti-o-nem":
  "Dead people have another color of singing."

To sopranos singing a final ppp "Je-sum Chri-stum" in a Bruckner motet:
  "They have no bodies, so they cannot have vibrato."

About conductors:
  "Conductors hear much less than you think, but they see much more than you think."
And later:
  "We cannot replace conductors by computers. I am not a policeman; I am not a metronome."