Katherine Jenkins

“With 'Believe' bringing really big success for me outside of the U.K. for the first time, it meant I have been touring around the world and that led to a gap from the studio. I really feel like the gap has done me the world of good. Throughout that time I was able to collect songs that I really loved.”

“I have a long fuse.”

“Marilyn Monroe was supposedly a size 16, which is probably why I love her style; it suits me better.”

“I'd love to play Carmen - it's the perfect mezzo role.”

“I would absolutely, definitely never sell my wedding pictures to a magazine. I'd like it to be a special day, not a photo shoot. And once you've done that, your marriage becomes everybody else's business.”

“With all the hundreds of dresses and shoes I have, it would be an absolute crime if I don't have a little girl. I have a whole room at home filled with my stage wear.”

“Being a question on 'The Weakest Link,' that was quite a moment.”

“When I did 'Dancing with the Stars' I did lose an awful lot of weight and I think at the time everybody was sort of alarmed by it. You can eat anything and it is still dropping off you when you are doing that amount of exercise.”

“For stage wear and gowns, Julien McDonald, who is a friend of mine. I love that he can be totally over the top for stage wear!”

“My mother and father were perfect role models. They were together for 25 years and very much in love. But I've got too much to do now. I'm only 27.”

“I wasn't the best in my class at the Royal Academy. There was a really good soprano and baritone who were technically better and are doing really well in opera now. But I was definitely the best mezzo-soprano in my class, because I was the only one of those!”

“Everything in my career is my decision - every picture, every outfit. You get one chance at this, and I never saw myself as being a puppet.”

“I've been lucky that I've performed with a lot of the classical people I've wanted to work with so I'd like to do something that people didn't see coming. Like Madonna, or being Welsh - the Tom Jones thing. Or somebody suggested N-Dubz - that would be brilliant!”

“I was such a geek in school.”

“I have never called myself an opera singer. Other people do, but I always call myself a classical singer. I'd love to do opera, but I'm still too young and I don't want to do it until I'm ready. I realise that when I do that it's going to be... up for discussion, shall we say, so I want to get it right.”

“I've always said that I count myself as a classical crossover artist. To be so, you have to have the core classical training, which I did for many, many years, but also be interested in the pop side of things. You can fit in somewhere in the middle. I feel I do that really well.”

“You're now getting a new breed of people like Il Divo and Andrea Bocelli and I think that's why people feel less intimidated by classical music than they once did.”

“I get 'voluptuous' a lot, or 'shapely,' but the fact is that as you get older you learn to embrace your body type. I wasn't able to do that until I was at least 23.”

“I have such happy memories of performing in a choir and I don't think I'd have got where I am today without all that experience. So my advice to young singers is to either join your school or church's choir or find one in your local area. Choral music at any level teaches you so much about musicianship and blending your voice.”

“When I dance, I forget everything else and just feel completely happy.”