I had two sisters, and we would love to get dressed up and pretend that we were chic, sophisticated ladies. And I think that was a great sort of preparation, in a way.

I'm thought of as a cool, unemotional dancer, but inside I'm not.

I loved tests because it was another form of competing, a healthy competition.

You're never more of an individual than when you're a happy team player.

I loved the stage not because it provided an escape from myself or my humdrum life but because when the curtain went up I could be whoever I wanted to be, and that was true freedom - to be myself.

Once I started dancing, I was not the spoiled brat or the rebellious child that I was as a child.

The arts are the hospitals for our souls.

I set as my goal to be the best dancer I could be. Not the most famous, or the highest paid dancer, just the best I could be. Out of this discipline came great freedom and calm.

On the other hand, I think it is wonderful for everyone to take ballet classes, at any age. It gives you a discipline, it gives you a place to go. It gives you some control in your life.

As soon as I hear music, something in me starts to vibrate.

When you get on stage, you can be anything. You are removed from reality in a way, the real world.

Future never desires to become a past

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.

When love ceases to be tragic it is something else and the individual again throws himself in search of tragedy.

Without me there could be no everybody.

Don't get sidetracked. If you do get sidetracked, get back on track as soon as possible. Ultimately sidetracking kills you.

Small spaces allow me the intimacy, but make it more of a challenge for the more theatrical pieces.

Don't think for one min that I haven't been taking mental notes of everyone taking shots at me this summer. And I mean everyone!

The crisis is the price for the capitalist system

I think I'm a music fan before anything else.

No matter how long the room has been dark, an hour or a million years, the moment the lamp of awareness is lit the entire room becomes luminous. You are that luminosity. You are that clear light.