Alma Gluck

Vocal study before age 20 is likely to be injurious, though some survive it in the hands of very careful and understanding teachers.

One does not study for a goal. One sings because one can't help it! The 'goal' nine times out of ten is a mere accident.

Inspired by the purse rather than the soul, the mercenary side fairly screams in many of the works put out by every day American publishers.

The student who deceives himself into thinking that he is giving his life like an ascetic in the spirit of sacrifice for art, is the victim of a deplorable species of egotism.

Time and again, a student will send me an urgent appeal to hear her, saying she is poor and wants my advice as to whether it is worthwhile to continue her studies. I invariably refuse such requests, saying that if the student could give up her work on my advice, she had better give it up without it.

Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works.

Acquiring a repertoire in these days, when the vocal literature is so immense, so overwhelming, that the student with sense will devote all his energies to work and not imagine himself a martyr to art.