A biography for Montserrat Caballehasn’t been written yet.
“I am not a person who can do nothing. I get very bored.”
“I may no longer sing as I did 30 years ago, but what I am doing, I am doing well.”
“The sound of a mother's voice expresses a feeling of intimacy, which has a truly magical effect on the listener.”
“I don't cancel because of temperament. I have had seven major surgeries in my life. I have had tumors. I have had two children with Caesareans; you don't just get up and sing the day after one of those.”
“If I cannot sing, I have the impression that I no longer exist. I mean it. I mean that I am not physically there.”
“I've received many awards, but I'm most proud of the ones for my country's music.”
“Drama if I sing, drama if I don't sing. What do you do?”
“Of course there are other prima donnas around. So many of my colleagues, younger ones, are wonderful.”
“This has not changed: always like the first time, very, very nervous. But when the music begins, you are in the music, it's a sort of transformation. Your feeling for the music is greater and has nothing to do with your nerves. You go out of yourself.”
“Music is part of life. It is not the real life. I belong to that first: family, children. The important things.”
“I try in roles like Salome to sing earthily, but it comes out as sweet-earthy. You know, it's like when someone has a beautiful face: you can do what you want to it, but it's still beautiful.”
“You see, God has blessed me - I don't know how else to say it - with a beautiful sound.”
“I have never felt like a diva!”
“I love to sing with my daughter. Audiences like it because a mother-daughter pairing is a curiosity.”
“The moment you say, 'Please, give me a reason for this', then you are being impossible and temperamental.”
“When a singer truly feels and experiences what the music is all about, the words will automatically ring true.”
“A soprano's voice is a little like a mother's cry, which is why it attracts all human beings.”
“I have many that wants to, let's say, marry me. But I always tell my mother that the day I have to ask myself, 'I love this man?' means I don't love him.”
“I am living against all predictions. The doctors say I am a sort of witch.”
“I realised in 1985, after sitting for months and being very down, that I have to move. I have to be busy. Because, otherwise, it is like being in a waiting room. And waiting for what?”