The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener.

My muse must come to me on union time.

They are poets of gesture.

It's like the time capsule with everything in it. Or like the seed that when you plant it, becomes the enormous tree with leaves and fruit. Everybody was in that little seed, and so everything can open. The tree of dance is like that. It just takes a long, long time to blossom.

The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.

I cannot move, I cannot even want to move, unless I hear the music first.

If you don't feel challenged, it's because you're not doing enough. Ballet should never feel comfortable. Comfortable is lazy! If you're comfortable when you dance, you're not pushing yourself hard enough. 100 % is not enough. You have to give 200%. One tendu takes years of hard work and will never be perfect. Everything in ballet is a challenge.