Mark Getty

I was raised in Italy for the early part of my life, in a relatively small village near Siena, and everyone worked there, from the day that they would walk to the day that they died, so I didn't really see that I was particularly different.

Opera is a key way of talking about life and all the things that are important to people in life.

Most people, if they have an opportunity to do little, will do just that, particularly if you're born into money. I could have easily done nothing, but it would have been boring and unfulfilling.

My father was never interested in anything outside England. He was an Anglophile who was interested in things that, in his mind, were quintessentially English.

I'm interested in helping people obtain the benefits enjoyed by the First World of efficient government. I want people in sub-Saharan Africa and other extremely impoverished parts of the world to acquire those same opportunities.

If you have the good fortune of having money, it's almost an obligation to think creatively of ways of helping other people. But it shouldn't be in a haphazard way. You need a structure, a formula, so you don't give to everything.

The last thing I wanted in life was to be measured by what I had inherited, as opposed to what I had done.

Rich, arrogant, lucky, mollycoddled and stupid. That's always people's preconception.