I think birth and motherhood are not things that you're trained to do. You might have a good example in your own mum, but nobody teaches you how to be a really great mum.
I'm the lucky one who got asked to do 'The Sound of Music' and all the other lovely things that I did.
I had toured around England endlessly throughout my teens, but when I came to the U.S. to perform on Broadway, that was a huge step.
The arts need funding.
You can't bring the arts too soon to kids.
There's nothing like the joy of the arts, and promoting the arts early in children is going to give them such a start in life in a way.
I've made my pact with the Lord for the next lifetime. I would love to be a first-class musician. A super one.
I love that President and Mrs. Obama are embracing the arts. I am so delighted.
I love my garden. I love my privacy. I'm very fierce about it. I try not to let too many people into my home. That's my private place.
Marriage is the hardest work you're ever going to do.
Singing has been a cherished gift, and my inability to sing has been a devastating blow.
I come from a long line of below-stairs maids and gardeners. Good ol' peasant stock. My mother and her sister made a quantum leap out of that life. Then I made another quantum leap.
More than anything, the arts are the best teaching tool.
I do not knock 'Poppins' or 'The Sound of Music.' They gave me pleasure, and I know they've given a lot of people enormous pleasure.
Programs that bring the arts to young kids are always the first to be cut. It's mind-boggling to me.
Actually, I had a lot of good people with me - my mother's sister did a lot of taking care of me, and I suppose I got more attention than my stepbrothers because at least I got to travel with my parents.
I didn't know other children from divorced families, and I was a bit of a lost soul for a while. Then suddenly, I was performing. And it gave me an identity.
I've always seen the cup as half-full.
I know I probably have a lot of rage in me that I don't show. But I'm not about to wallow in it or reveal it.
There are elements of me in the roles I've played in the past. But people forget that Mary Poppins was just a role, too.
I'm resilient, and I'm professional.
I justified working so hard by knowing that I was helping to maintain the roof over our heads.
Truthfully, I mostly can be as private as I want.
My mother was terribly important to me, and I know how much I yearned for her in my youth, but I don't think I truly trusted her.
I grew up knowing only war, so for me, it was the way things were. It wasn't pleasant by any means.
I do wish somewhere there was a film of our stage production of 'My Fair Lady.'
Growing up in England, of course you do absorb certain ways the royals wave their hands and carry themselves.
In my early years, I was much too ignorant and didn't realize how desperately important it all is, how really important the lyrics are. And for me as a singer, I am a lady who takes the lyrics first.
I'm not very good with some of the more modern songs that have an awful lot of 'doo wah wahs,' if you know what I mean, because I can't do anything with them.
Let me put it this way: I can sing a hell of an 'Old Man River,' way down in the bass.
