In order to be creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative.

Creativity is more about taking the facts, fictions, and feelings we store away and finding new ways to connect them.

Any comic is a tragic soul. Comedy is one of the things that allows one to survive. Particularly if one has been in the process of separating off the emotions, it's one place you can process them.

Every work of art needs a spine – an underlying theme, a motive for coming into existence. It doesn't have to be apparent to the audience. But you need it at the start of the creative process to guide you and keep you going.

The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.

Solitude is an unavoidable part of creativity. Self-reliance is a happy by-product.

I began ear training when I was about six months old. My mother was a concert pianist, and she started all of her children with music before they were a year old. Then she began to see that I had a musical gift...