Mikhail Baryshnikov quotes:

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

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

You cannot be happy with your family while being personally unhappy with your work. It's a Catch-22 kind of thing.

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

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.

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

Dances have a second and third life. You feel they are never ready. They always have a chance for another life.

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.

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.

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.

I cannot belong to a nonprofit organization because when you receive grants, you have to make such great compromises with your artistic plans.

When I see people on the street, I look at how they walk. It's like a signature, a fingerprint.

I think art education, especially in this country, which government pretty much ignores, is so important for young people.

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.

I fell in love with New York.

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.

Everything I do, it's a bit painterly. I like being surrounded by objects, mostly on paper. I like the images. I like the painting. I like good photography. It's something that makes me an emotional connection, and I feel comfortable around it.

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

No matter what I try to do or explore, my Kirov training, my expertise, and my background call me to return to dancing after all, because that's my real vocation, and I have to serve it.

Your heart is very much connected to your mind.

I don't go to a gym, I don't do yoga. I don't do personal training.

I read Russian literature a lot.

I was always interested in photography and other forms of art.

When a body moves, it's the most revealing thing. Dance for me a minute, and I'll tell you who you are.

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

Film, theater and television always kind of scared me. I don't ever seriously think of myself as an actor at all, and I don't plan any film career or television career.

I never liked dance photography; it's very flat, and dance photography in the studio looks very contrived.

I think I got disappointed over the years about New York, about the States. You know, sometimes you go and visit Europe and see good old socialism in its good part! You see public concern about art, and young people's participation and young faces in the audience.

I cannot draw to save my life, and I'm not a big art scholar, but I worked with many designers throughout my career - in theater, in dance, costume designers, set designers, and I have a lot of artist friends and I do photography, and I think it's kind of in my life.

I spend at least a couple hours a day in the studio, every day, whether I'm dancing or not.

Dance is one of the most revealing art forms.

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

I like to make my own mistakes.

Running a company is pretty demanding.

Obviously, the young dancers lack a certain air of maturity.

You open a section of 'The New York Times,' and there's a review or a story on a choreographer or a dancer, and there's an informative, clear image of a dancer. This is, in my view, not an interesting photograph.

I miss horribly those couple of hours before the performance when you get into the theater and you see people.

Divinity of art, it's such a mystery. How to convince people that no matter how much money you can spend on education and art education especially, that it implants, it directs a young person for the rest of their lives, and always in the most humane and positive and dignified manner.

I've always said, 'I am a selector, I am not defector' - the first few phrases in English I learned. I said I hate 'defector'; something defective about the people. It's a bad word.

I have some Russian friends. But probably only 10 percent. I don't hang out usually in the big Russian communities in Brooklyn and New Jersey.

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

It's weird when you see pieces of choreography that were done for you 15 or 20 years ago and now they are being done by another dance company.

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

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

Be. Good. To yourself, to other people, to everything you do. It's a norm of life by which people should try to live. Don't waste time. Be interesting and interested.

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 was very restless. I really wanted to be a part of a kind of a progressive society. I was fed up with these Communist doctrines and you were hassled all the time with members of the Party committee who were KGB, what you have to do, where in the West you can go or not to go.

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.

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

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

When I'm alone, I work sometimes with music, sometimes without and sometimes just listening to NPR.

If your only dance experience is the Nutcracker, it will be a shock; hopefully shocking in a good way.

Perfection is a theory. You cannot be a perfect human being, perfect artist. You cannot be a perfect husband, you cannot be a perfect father probably and probably I am not. But go through your daily routine with hope you will be a little better in all respects, and do something meaningful

Fundamentals are the building blocks of fun.

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

I know when I am on stage and I'm kind of on the right track - hopefully most of the time. But a lot of time I'm not.

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.

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.

You see, dancers are quite mature people because they start performing so early. They become professionals when they start to take everyday classes.

Choreographers use me as the old guy who still dances. Not that I put on white tights.

I remember vividly seeing 'Tarzan' and Fred Astaire, the Chaplin films, Fred Astaire musicals, MGM, because of my mother. She was just interested in everything and she took me to opera and ballet, and then ballet got me hooked.

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

My life has been immensely enriched by gay mentors, colleagues and friends, and any discrimination and persecution of gay people is unacceptable.

I'm an impatient person in many respects. I like to put myself in uncomfortable situations. It forces me to deliver.

The more injuries you get, the smarter you get.

The Russian people get so insanely close to each other as friends. Their lives are interrelated so much on an everyday basis.

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

The body cannot lie. You cannot be somebody else onstage, no matter how good of an actor or dancer or singer you are. When you open your arms, move your finger, the audience knows who you are, you know.

Dancers are made, not born.

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

I would like to go and dance in Palestine one day, with great pleasure, great pleasure.

Astaire was not a sexual animal, but he made his partners look so extraordinarily related to him.

Nobody else in the world has a form like the Native American musical, and Americans should be very proud.

People of art should never get married and have children, because it's a selfish experience.

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.

Acting is not my language at all.

Although I don't gamble in life - I've never played poker - I do gamble on stage. I gamble with myself: 'Can I do this?'

Dance is an ephemeral, a fleeting art. To describe this momentum, every movement on stage, in words is virtually impossible.

Dancing is my obsession. My life.

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

He is a male butterfly without the wings - the same kind of grace of a very young horse, so angular.

I - you know, I'm not an actor.

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.

I am not the first straight dancer or the last.

I am not trying to do material which I cannot do full out.

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

I cannot stand authority.

I don't try to dance better than anybody but myself.

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 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.

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

I like the most provocative and most surprising partnerships on stage. Intensity and surprise.

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

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 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!

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

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

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

It's what's left in life, to work with interesting people.

Just sit and open your eyes and open your heart. It's dance theater.

No one is born a dancer. You have to want it more than anything.

Nobody is born a dancer.

People dance at any age.

Soviet regime in a way deprived me from my childhood in my homeland, because my father was in military, and after the Yalta agreement he was sent to teach in military academy in Riga, and I was born then.

There comes a moment in a young artist's life when he knows he has to bring something to the stage from within himself. He has to put in something in order to be able to take something.

To achieve some depth in your field requires a lot of sacrifices.

To walk across the street is a risk.

We're trying to stretch our muscles creatively. It gives us so much more freedom.

What brought me to the theater, no matter you're a Jew or a Russian or Armenian or Latvian, are suddenly illuminated by stage light and one beautiful image of dance.

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.

What people will do to get away from boredom!

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.

Working is living to me.

You can be totally involved, you could admire just the shape of or you could be totally emotionally mushed up into the dance.

You don't measure life by receiving awards.

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.