The reason why I place as much significant value on character as on vocal skills is surely to be found in the fact that I presently feel alone and abandoned on the inside and don’t know how to deal even externally with people who are not older than I am. I think generally that the musician suffers the strongest under such loneliness.

It has happened to me "more than once" that first everything bored me, then repulsed me, then nauseated me, so that I demanded only one thing: away, away from here! But in the end I found it better to remain "here" to bite down hard and swallow it down. I have managed this with a certain virtuosity, because for my whole life, first at home and then "in foreign parts", I was always alone deep down, so alone that I even learned not to wallow in "self-pity". Instead I learned to develop a mask of good humor, of irony and sarcasm, the armor of self-defense. The only thing that everyone sees of me.