When I was 14, I thought I looked terrible. I wore these typical Slavic shoes with metal bottoms so you could always hear me coming and this really ugly princess skirt and blouse with the top button closed. I had a boy haircut, a baby face covered with pimples, and a really big nose.

I have found that long durational art is really the key to changing consciousness. On such a deep level. Not just the performer, but the one looking at it.

I had such an intense relationship to every person. I still see people on the street and we lock eyes, and say "Oh my god!" and we just kiss and stay like that and sometimes cry.

You can't choreograph death, but you can choreograph your funeral.

I am obsessive always, even as a child. On one side is this strict orthodox religion, on the other is communism, and I am this little girl pulled between the two. It makes me who I am. It turns me into the kind of person that Freud would have a field day with, for sure.

If we go for the easy way, then we never change.

You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.