Quotes from Suzanne Farrell

There is pain and sacrifice in everyone's world. That's why, when I was dancing, I had no pain.

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.

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

But what was my motivation was music, and the fact that I love to move around. I'm always moving around.

As soon as I hear music, something in me starts to vibrate.

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

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'm thought of as a cool, unemotional dancer, but inside I'm not.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

I was very much of a tomboy.

I had two sisters, and we would love to get dressed up and pretend that we were chic, sophisticated ladies. And I think that was a great sort of preparation, in a way.

I think it was important that I learned to love to dance eventually for its own sake, as opposed to wanting to be a ballerina.

I learned to love dance for its own sake.