The routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightening bold of inspiration, maybe more. And this routine is available to everyone.

Alone is a fact, a condition where no one else is around. Lonely is how you feel about that.

The disasteris not the money, although the money will be missed. The disaster is the disrespect--this belief that the arts are dispensable, that they're not critical to a culture's existence.

I never studied with Balanchine, but his work was very important to me.

It's vital to establish some rituals-automatic but decisive patterns of behavior-at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way.

Traveling the paths of greatness, even in someone else's footprints, is a vital means to acquiring skill.

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.