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.

Once I started dancing, I was not the spoiled brat or the rebellious child that I was as a child.

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.

And I just thought, this is what I want to be. And I knew that dancing would be my chosen profession.

The body can do amazing things in a situation when it is really called for.

That the work involved, the willingness to take chances, the commitment, the opportunity to get on stage and make people happy, was more important than becoming famous, or even what I was dancing.

I liked to read but, being a dancer, I didn't have a lot of time to read.