How do you rate works of genius? Partly by personal inclination, partly by accepted wisdom, partly by popularity.

When December comes, can The Nutcracker be far behind? No, it cant - not in America, anyway.

An editor has to be selfless, and yet has also to be strong-minded.

Diana Vishneva is not only a magnificent dancer but a magnificent actress - no one works harder or understands more.

Beloved Renegade is a meditation on Walt Whitman, on tenderness, on dying.

Classics are constantly being re-imagined and transformed, and the originals are none the worse for it; they endure.

Increasingly, editing means going to lunch. It means editing with a credit card, not with a pencil.

How the English love playing at being naughty boys!

Ballet is like any other art form in that we all start out knowing nothing about it.

I have fixed more sentences than most people have read in their lives.

If you are a good editor, your relationship with every writer is different.

...if the Democrats suggested a plan to burn down the Capitol building, the Republicans would counter with a plan to do it over the course of three years.

Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance?

I can speak four dialects, but none of them is fairy language.

I was number one in the ratings four times last year and twice this season. What could be more damn equal than that? If they get any more equal, I don't want it.

Let this be your wall of brass, to have nothing on your conscience, no guilt to make you turn pale.

Prayer doesn't change things - God changes things in answer to prayer.

Piracy doesn't kill music, boy bands do.

Hereafter, in a better world than this, I shall desire more love and knowledge of you

Now the melancholy God protect thee, and the tailor make thy garments of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is opal.