Suzanne Farrell Quotes

I didn't care too much for ballet, because you had to be more disciplined, and you sort of looked like everyone else. It required a certain kind of conformity that I didn't feel like I wanted to do.

When you get on stage, you can be anything. You are removed from reality in a way, the real world.

Fifth positions, heads, musicality, energy. Not technical things so much-getting your leg higher or doing more turns but things that would set you apart from other dancers. The only way you can be different is to be yourself If you don't find your spirit and reveal it, you just look like every other dancer.

On the other hand, I think it is wonderful for everyone to take ballet classes, at any age. It gives you a discipline, it gives you a place to go. It gives you some control in your life.

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

The steps must be second nature to me, so that the music seems to be drawing the steps out of me and I don't look as if I'm struggling to fit the steps to the music.

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.

Plie is the first thing you learn and the last thing you master.

Of course, in the art class, I was the model.

Good theater should always send people away feeling changed.

Treat each class as if it were your first.

I like dramatic ballets, particularly if they're ballets in which I have a chance to go from one extreme of style or characterization to another.

So dancing was not something I had a great desire to do.

Eating a healthy diet is not just about eating a few special foods. There's a bigger picture. You need to practice moderation, eat a variety of foods, and get enough physical activity.

You're never more of an individual than when you're a happy team player.

When you are on stage, you don't see faces. The lights are in your eyes and you see just this black void out in front of you. And yet you know there is life out there, and you have to get your message across.

I liked tap, because I liked hearing the results of my movements.

Do not brood. It makes the moment you are living in unavailable for learning and life.

Even though I am a professional, and I know what the steps are, I don't quite know how I'm going to do them, because I haven't lived that moment yet. I always feel very insecure and I get very excited.

After I stopped dancing, I was unable to listen to beautiful music.

I think especially in a world where you have so little say about what goes on in your life, or in the politics of the world around you, it is wonderful to go into that studio, and tell yourself what to do.

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

I was very happy that I was as normal as possible before I went into serious dance.

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.

You don't learn from a situation where you do something well. You enjoy it and you give yourself credit, but you don't really learn from that. You learn from trial and error, trial and error, all the time.

I set as my goal to be the best dancer I could be. Not the most famous, or the highest paid dancer, just the best I could be. Out of this discipline came great freedom and calm.

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.

I loved tests because it was another form of competing, a healthy competition.

The particular ballet was not so important as the fact that I was physically healthy, and capable of getting out there and dancing as often as possible.

I didn't have any doubts about my choice of career, but I had constant doubts about my ability, yes.

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