John Coates

“ Generally, I feel that broadcasting is bringing me into closer touch with numbers of people who have known me and my work for years. When one is a unit in a great audience, one has rather a lost feeling, but when one is sitting in one's own dining-room, among one's own familiar furniture, perhaps alone, and an already familiar voice, singing an old familiar song, comes intimately to ones ears, there is a greater sense of personal communion than can ever be felt in a crowd which is both visible and tangible. ”

“ Well—bless them !—it was very nice of them to applaud an unseen singer, and, in my humble opinion, it is a greater tribute than when the singer can be seen, just as I think applause at a cinema is more likely to be genuine than when the actors are present in the flesh. ”

“ Some people account for this mystical soul-memory in terms of pre-existence, but I must be content to learn what is a very real psychological phenomenon to the philosophers. I am only a singer, and the artist's imagination carries his thoughts along strange byways. ”