Mikhail Baryshnikov Quotes

I don't drink milk, and I don't eat bread, pasta or rice. But I eat a lot of meat, chicken, fish and salads.

I have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer's work is.

I was never like, "collect, collect," like people who go to auctions. I never spent a serious amount of time because I don't have any time!

Dancers are stripped enough onstage. You don't have to know more about them than they've given you already.

My mother had a son from previous marriage and her husband died in Second World War.

I read Russian literature a lot.

Every ballet, whether or not successful artistically or with the public, has given me something important.

Running a company is pretty demanding.

I feel very uneasy with a lot of aspects of the Russian life and the Russian people.

I go a lot to see young people downtown in little theaters. It's great. If you start somebody's career, it's so exciting.

I am not the first straight dancer or the last.

I fell in love with New York. It was like every human being, like any relationship. When I was a young New Yorker, it was one city. When I was a grown man, it was another city. I worked with many dance organizations and many wonderful people. In the '90s, it became kind of a hard and unwelcoming city in many ways. It became conservative, like the whole country.

I gave away a lot of works for benefits and then people would also give me back.

I am teaching more. That is what I do best.

Nothing is ever too expensive if it furthers the repertoire and artistic standards of a dance company.

Fundamentals are the building blocks of fun.

I kind of lost interest in the classical dance. I was very much interested in the modern choreography.

What do dancers think of Fred Astaire? It's no secret. We hate him. He gives us a complex because he's too perfect. His perfection is an absurdity. It's too hard to face.

In the second part of life you get rid of stuff you've accumulated.

You invest into the future, and that's how young people become human in best sense of it - through the great experience of listening a Müller symphony or to see a great play by Tennessee Williams, experience something in a ballet, in a film.

I want to see people dance, and I would like to guess what kind of people they are. I don't want to know the recipe for their pasta.

I cannot stand authority.

I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. I played their game, pretending. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB. Horrifying.

A country like Belgium, or socialist countries in central Europe spend more money on art education than the United States, which is a really puzzling thought.

What people will do to get away from boredom!

I found that dance, music, and literature is how I made sense of the world... it pushed me to think of things bigger than lifes daily routines... to think beyond what is immediate or convenient.

Creative Artists Agency put together a project of extraordinary mediocrity and colossal stupidity. Otherwise, it was great.

The problem is not making up the steps but deciding which ones to keep.

I like to go to anybody else's birthday, and if I'm invited I'm a good guest. But I never celebrate my birthdays. I really don't care.

Your body actually reminds you about your age and your injuries - the body has a stronger memory than your mind.

My father was a Party member and he was a pretty high rank military officer under the colonel, junior colonel, I don't know the term. He was a total Stalinist. A bit with a streak of anti-Semitism and very shrewd man, a very kind of nervous man.

It doesn't matter how high you lift your leg. The technique is about transparency, simplicity, making an earnest attempt.

I want to do exactly what I want to do. I'd rather gamble on the box office than beg for a grant.

I adored my mother, and I will always have extraordinary memories about her and remember her, and she opened the doors for me to appreciate arts.

I always had a kind of strange relationship with New York City, with total love affair in the beginning then retreat during the kind of conservatives of politics and real estate and business came, and then I am again kind of fighting for the justice to the city, to open the city for the artists.

In '74 it was really a very gloomy atmosphere, I would say, to put it mildly.

I get speeding ticket like everybody else. If the restaurant is full I'm waiting in line like everybody else.

When a dancer comes onstage, he is not just a blank slate that the choreographer has written on. Behind him he has all the decisions he has made in life. Each time, he has chosen, and in what he is onstage, you see the result of those choices. You are looking at the person he is, and the person who, at this point, he cannot help but be Exceptional dancers, in my experience, are also exceptional people, people with an attitude toward life, a kind of quest, and an internal quality. They know who they are, and they show this to you, willingly.

I really reject that kind of comparison that says, Oh, he is the best. This is the second best. There is no such thing.

In opera tradition, when opera die-hard fans, there is a replacement of singer or singer wasn't at his or hers vocal best, doing something, they boo. Especially now that they pay hundreds of dollars for the ticket.

Now there is in a way a renaissance of modern dance - suddenly, it is more respected and discovered.

To achieve some depth in your field requires a lot of sacrifices. Want to or not, you're thinking about what you're doing in life-in my case, dancing.

You cannot dance physically certain things. But look at tango dancers or flamenco or Japanese classical theater. You can, if you're smart enough and you collaborate with the right choreographers, you could really dance your age.

We lived, until I was 12 or so, in communal apartment with five different families and the same kitchen, in two little - my brother and me and my parents. It was hell, but it was a common thing. My father was not general or admiral, but he was colonel. He was teaching in military academy military topography.

No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.

Dancing is my obsession. My life.

A theater is such a revealing form of art, such a transparent and good actors, they're such powerful individuals. I always kind of dreamt that one day I will open my mouth on stage.

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.