Usually, I'm only sad when something sad happens. I am not a melancholic person. I like to live very much in the present. If I was an animal, I'd be a little cat. They like to live life.

The music of ABBA is not that happy. It might sound happy, in some strange way, but deep within, it's not happy music. It has that Nordic melancholic feeling to it. What fools you is the girls' voices. You know, I do think that is one of the secrets about ABBA. Even when we were really quite sad, we always sounded jubilant.

I'm not sure. But that bless-his/her-heart kind of melancholic humor is among my favorite things in the world. I guess it exposes a kind of humanity - or that's the hope, at least - a kind of grudging respect for human frailty. Unless it's actually kicking human frailty while it's down - I'm not sure.

When humor can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has a success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it's just wonderful.

I enjoy melancholic music and art. They take me to places I don't normally get to go.

I love being on stage. I'm completely totally relaxed. It's the only time in my life when I know where I am and what's coming next. The other Robert Powell is probably fairly melancholic. Let's just say happiness isn't my default position. There are dark parts. I'm very good at it. I frighten people sometimes.

When humor can be made to alternate with melancholy one has a success but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time it's just wonderful.

Often the roles I'm offered in England are melancholic women who are filled with regret for the past regret for their fading beauty.