In fact, ballet companies did not exist in the Midwest when I was a child.

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.

Don't change your morality for the people around you, change the people around you with your morality.

And it is strange that absence can feel like presence.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people!

Been trying the soapy water and instant coffee method. Works somewhat, but boy it tastes terrible. I don't know how you guys can stand it. I'm going back to milk and espresso for my cappas.

My favorite time is late at night. I seem to wake up and want to work after 10pm, in my bubble of night.

Not for the flag Of any land because myself was born there Will I give up my life. But I will love that land where man is free, And that will I defend.

I found something! Courage--just that; courage as a rule of life and something to cling to always.

We've come to this dark time in which the new Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having their rights suspended.

In public administration good sense would seem to require that public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize eventual disappointment.

As a person of color, I was just really tired of the fact that I wasn't seeing my story in the culture.