Melba Quotes & Sayings

You won't be famous until people start saying the worst things they can about you. Don't worry! It's a good sign! — Nellie Melba

Always sing below your potential. — Nellie Melba

One of the drawbacks of fame is that one can never escape from it. — Nellie Melba

Music is not written in red, white and blue. It is written in the heart's blood of the composer. — Nellie Melba

There are no souls, Melba thought with a touch of pity. We are bags of meat with a little electricity running through them. No ghosts, no spirits, no souls. The only thing that survives is the story people tell about you. — James S.A. Corey

I sat evaluating
myself.

I decided
to lie down. — Melba Colgrove

If I'd been a housemaid I'd have been the best in Australia - I couldn't help it. It's got to be perfection for me. — Nellie Melba

The eternal task of song can never be finished in a single lifetime. That is the beauty and fascination of the art. Once you begin to phrase finely, you will feel more joy in the beautiful finish of a beautiful phrase than that caused by the loudest applause of an immense audience. The latter excites for a moment; the former endures forever. — Nellie Melba

...at least that would explain the weeping and moaning emanating from the woman's bedroom at night. It woke her regularly and created an illusion which suggested disembodied spirits roamed the corridors. And if there was one thing Melba would not have it was disembodied spirits roaming the corridors... — Brian Kavanagh

If you wish to understand me at all (and to write an autobiography is only to open a window into one's heart) you must understand first and foremost, that I am an Australian. — Nellie Melba

I had no idea the Monkey Bar meat loaf was going to have my name on it, but when the restaurant opened, there it was, on the menu, Nora's Meat Loaf. I felt that I had to order it, out of loyalty to myself, and it was exactly as good as it had been at the tasting. I was delighted. What's more, I had the oddest sense of accomplishment. I somehow felt I'd created this meat loaf, even though I'd had nothing to do with it. I'd always envied Nellie Melba for her peach, Princess Margherita for her pizza, and Reuben for his sandwich, and now I was sort of one of them. Nora's Meat Loaf. It was something to remember me by. It wasn't exactly what I was thinking of back in the day when we used to play a game called "If you could have something named after you, what would it be?" In that period, I'd hoped for a dance step, or a pair of pants. But I was older now, and I was willing to settle for a meat loaf. — Nora Ephron

What are we singers but the silver-voiced messengers of the poet and the musician? — Nellie Melba

For four to six months at a time, I would barely eat. I lived on a diet of Melba toast, carrots, and black coffee. — Alanis Morissette

Mr. Harris had three boxes of Melba toast, a can of smoked oysters, a wheel of Gouda cheese, two bunches of grapes, a package of smoked salmon, a can of sardines, a bottle of sparkling grape juice and a can of cocktail weenies in his pants. I simply ask you to please use common sense. Thank you. — N.M. Silber

But if Miss Golightly remained unconscious of my existence, except as a doorbell convenience, I became, through the summer, rather an authority on hers. I discovered, from observing the trash-basket outside her door, that her regular reading consisted of tabloids and travel folders and astrological charts; that she smoked an esoteric cigarette called Picayunes; survived on cottage cheese and Melba Toast; that her vari-colored hair was somewhat self-induced. The same source made it evident that she received V-letters by the bale. They were torn into strips like bookmarks. I used occasionally to pluck myself a bookmark in passing. Remember and miss you and rain and please write and damn and goddamn were the words that recurred most often on these slips; those, and lonesome and love. — Truman Capote

He was the yin to my yang, the frick to my frack, the melba toast to my Chex. — Alice Clayton

The task that remains is to cope with our interdependence - to see ourselves reflected in every other human being and to respect and honor our differences. — Melba Pattillo Beals

Do everything yourself. — Nellie Melba

There are two things I like stiff and one of them's jelly. — Nellie Melba

The first rule in opera is the first rule in life: see to everything yourself. — Nellie Melba