Susan Alexander

"Every night on stage, I was performing not for the audience, but for his judgment."

"He loved power more than he could ever love me."

"I didn't know then that you can't change someone who doesn't want to change."

"The sled meant more to him than I ever did."

"He was obsessed with control, and I was the only thing he couldn't quite control."

"I learned that some men collect people the way they collect art."

"If only I'd been stronger, or braver, or different."

"He wanted to change me into someone magnificent. I wanted him to accept me as I was."

"I was his greatest investment and his greatest loss."

"The world thought I was lucky to marry him. The world was wrong."

"I gave him my youth, my voice, my dreams. In return, I got a palace and loneliness."

"He was never able to admit that he could be wrong about anything."

"I think the truth is that he didn't know how to love anyone but himself."

"I learned too late that you can't sing your way out of a bad marriage."

"He wanted me to be everything I wasn't and nothing that I was."

"The only power I had was the power to leave, and it took me too long to use it."

"I was his greatest ambition, but I was never his greatest love."

"If I could go back and talk to that young girl, I'd tell her to sing only for herself."

"He collected the world, but he couldn't keep it, and he couldn't keep me either."

"I learned that sometimes the grandest gestures come from the smallest hearts."

"I wish I'd known that my voice was enough before he told me it wasn't."

"He was a force of nature, but even nature can be destructive."

"I've had time to think, and I've realized that I deserved better."

"The opera wasn't my dream. It was his dream wearing my face."

"I think he would have been happier if I'd just been a portrait on his wall."

"I learned that love without respect is just control with a pretty name."

"He wanted to be a legend. I wanted to be happy. We couldn't both have what we wanted."

"I was his greatest triumph and his greatest tragedy."

"If I could change one thing, it would be the day I met him."

"I learned that the most beautiful palaces can be the loneliest prisons."