As unnatural as dancing is, you have to find a natural way to do the unnatural.

Often, when you've reached a very high level of achievement, you almost become paralyzed by the idea that anything you might do might be imperfect. Perfection is just the striving, the effort, the struggle, but it's hard to remember that.

There was a stage when Balanchine and I didn't talk. I was trying to develop my classical technique as opposed to the fast-track technique that he was pushing. We were very quiet with each other. But after two years he saw what I was doing and sent messages through other people that, yes, this is good.

Ballet is a riddle of means and ends.

In saying my prayers, I discovered the voice of an innermost self, the raw nerve of my identity.

As soon as you become afraid to make a fool of yourself, you're in trouble. I decided I may as well just see if I can live with myself making millions of mistakes and learn something from it.

At this stage of my life I would rather try and have some small impact within a company and suffer through those things than make such a big stink that nobody can trust to work with you. It's very important in an environment of a big institution that people don't feel threatened that you're going to expose them in any way.