I think perhaps I've learned to be myself. I have a theory that all artists who would be important - painters and writers - must learn to be themselves. It takes a very long time.

The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.

Dancing was something to be taken very seriously when engaged in and otherwise put out of mind.

Take your work seriously, but never yourself.

Life offstage has sometimes been a wilderness of unpredictables in an unchoreographed world.

The world of dance is a charmed place. Some people like to inhabit it, others to behold it; either way it is rewarding.

The essential thing about mothers is that one needs to know that they are there, particularly at that age when, paradoxically, one is trying so hard to break away from parental influence.