When you are on stage in front of an audience, you want to engage the entire crowd. If a thousand people are in the theater, you need to dance a thousand different ways, not one-thousandth of 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.

Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive.

Honestly, I just try to drink lots of water and get a decent amount of sleep!

I've been very fortunate in my career.

Often the biggest obstacle in meeting life’s challenges is actually our own fear of failure.

I need to work to feel well.

We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said that the only way to have a friend is to be one. We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion or mistrust or with fear.

All I can be is who I am right now; I can experience that and work with it. That's all I can do. The rest is the dream of the ego.

The dove, O hawk, that has once been wounded by thy talons, is frightened by the least movement of a wing. [Lat., Terretur minimo pennae stridore columba Unguibus, accipiter, saucia facta tuis.]

I think of the author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, 'I will tell you a story' and then he passes the hat.

Threatened folk live long.