All the New York City Ballet does is hit beautiful home runs.

The great risk is always saying, "how will I communicate what I'm trying to get across to a room full of strangers sitting in the dark watching a stage?"

What I hate about kitchen-sink dramas is [this idea] that the set is real, therefore you're going to be seeing truth. You have to earn truth. Truth can't be a part of the fact that people appear to talk that way and live in that room. You're looking for the poetry in something, and I don't mean poetry in the fancy sense. Naturalism believes by just replicating a thing you give the truth, rather than earning the truth.

Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy.

Everyone talks about America, this great country. You hear, "I'm more patriotic than you are. No, I'm more patriotic!" But how few people know the history of this country and how we came into being. That's the part that just amazed me.

I believe that the imagination is the passport we create to take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is another phrase for what is most uniquely us.

And it is always Easter Sunday at the New York City Ballet. It is always coming back to life. Not even coming back to life - it lives in the constant present.