I liked Latin, I like languages, I liked all the myths, and the Roman tales that we were required to translate in Latin, and all these interesting people who were never quite what they thought they would be or seemed to be.

I loved the stage not because it provided an escape from myself or my humdrum life but because when the curtain went up I could be whoever I wanted to be, and that was true freedom - to be myself.

Although we do come from a silent profession, it is important for us to verbalize what we want to say. (As I tell my students): you could love someone all your life, but if you never say it how are they going to know? There comes a point when you have to say what you mean, which makes you scream louder when you dance.

It's ungrateful to be wishing you were doing something else at the moment you are living. You haven't lived in the moment that you are really living, you are wishing you were somewhere else.

I used to love to play dress-up, where you get your mother's or your grandmother's dresses and high heels.

When you are on stage in front of an audience, you want to engage the entire crowd. If a thousand people are in the theater, you need to dance a thousand different ways, not one-thousandth of a way.

I had a wonderful childhood, coming from Cincinnati, and I think that it was great going into the life that I was going to have, where you have to start young as a dancer.