The life of a dancer is tragically short. What is remarkable about the New York City Ballet is that it makes us forget that. Because it keeps the ballet alive.

However, the moral center of New York City, I believe, is the New York City Ballet.

And it is always Easter Sunday at the New York City Ballet. It is always coming back to life. Not even coming back to life - it lives in the constant present.

The New York City Ballet is always about the realm of possibilities, the realm of what the human body can do, what the human spirit can do. And it's about listening, it's about listening to remarkable music and how we respond to that.

Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy.

I think that every year that the New York City Ballet is alive is worthy of celebration. Because otherwise the terrible thing is just that we take it for granted.

Does the New York City Ballet affect other places? Yeah, it lets people know they should come to New York.

The life of a dancer is tragically short. What is remarkable about the New York City Ballet is that it makes us forget that. Because it keeps the ballet alive.

I think of the New York City Ballet as the Yankees without George Steinbrenner.

And what would be great numbers in a Broadway show are now on stage of the New York City Ballet.

What we're dealt with hopefully is two arms, two eyes, two legs, a head, a heart. The variations, the extensions, the possibilities of the human body, what that can do.

I mean New York City is the financial capital of the world. It's where all the money passes through, the Dow Jones, whatever, that's where all the money goes.

People go to see beautiful paintings to see how much they cost. Wow. The practical value is that it shows you what the human spirit can do.

All the New York City Ballet does is hit beautiful home runs.

We live in a world where amnesia is the most wished-for state. When did history become a bad word?

The ballet makes us look at those bodies, it makes us listen to that music, it makes us wonder at the geometry, of the way they come together. The way that extraordinary space is controlled and given such emotional force.

Does any art have a practical value? People love to talk about how expensive a painting is. That's the only way we can talk about paintings in this century.

Show business offers more solid promises than Catholicism.

Avoiding humiliation is the core of tragedy and comedy.

Dance is very, very old. With Louis XIV at Versailles is where ballet started.

I wanted to be a ballet teacher.

Classical ballet will never die.

I've got no plans to be a ballet dancer at the moment.

When life takes me on a new journey, I simply remember the smile my first ballet recital put on my face and I move forward.

Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery.

The moment the curtain rose on that first ballet, I knew something wonderful and new had come into my life. I can still see the first scene. The ballet was Divertimento No. 15.

My grandmother had a Miss Margaret's School of Dance to teach tap and ballet to kids, but I never studied it. I was raised a Mormon and they're dancing fools. It's the only vice they have - dancing.

The real beauty of it - key to my life was playing key chords on a banjo. For somebody else it may be a golf club that mom and dad put in their hands or a baseball or ballet lessons. Real gift to give to me and put it in writing.

My background is somewhat unusual, as I trained to be a ballet dancer. I worked in the theatre for eight or nine years as a contemporary dancer. But as an actor one does read Shakespeare and does try to learn the classics.

However, the moral center of New York City, I believe, is the New York City Ballet.

I have ballet class every other day for two hours. And for "Six Feet Under", last week there was a sequence where I had to do a whole choreographed dance number, so I had four hours of dance practice every day.

I do take class because I still dance, and yes, I do slip into class with the Royal Ballet from time to time.

And it is always Easter Sunday at the New York City Ballet. It is always coming back to life. Not even coming back to life - it lives in the constant present.

It's no good running a pig farm badly for 30 years while saying, 'Really, I was meant to be a ballet dancer.' By then, pigs will be your style.

For 24 hours a day, for 10 years, all I thought about was being in a band. That's all I did. I had no other social life. I don't want my life to be like that now. I've spent the past 10 years having a real life as well. But Spandau Ballet is such a difficult shadow to outrun.

When other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers I kind of wanted to be a vampire.

The New York City Ballet is always about the realm of possibilities, the realm of what the human body can do, what the human spirit can do. And it's about listening, it's about listening to remarkable music and how we respond to that.

I used to dance when I was younger - ballet and modern dance.

At the ballet, you really feel like you're in the presence of something outside the rest of your life. Higher than the rest of your life.

I went to ballet school for nine years, and there was an agent for the whole school who happened to be there visiting one of the performances. She suggested an audition.

Wrestling is ballet with violence.

My Mom is a ballet director, so I had this idea in me that classical training is the best foundation for anything you do, so I wanted to get a classical background and voice.

I wanted to give people - which is fairly bizarre considering my whole life is contemporary dance really - I wanted to give people a really fulfilling sense that they had seen a white classical ballet - in a very pure form.

I grew up studying ballet; I grew up honing my craft.

Figure skating is an unlikely Olympic event but its good television. It's sort of a combination of gymnastics and ballet. A little sexy too which doesn't hurt.

I started taking ballet lessons when I was three and a half and I still take dance classes.

One of the few things in dance to match the Royal Ballet's curtain calls is the Royal Ballet's dancing.

I think that every year that the New York City Ballet is alive is worthy of celebration. Because otherwise the terrible thing is just that we take it for granted.

There would never have been a British Ballet without Diaghilev. He had a wonderful influence.