Mikhail Baryshnikov

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.

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

Nobody is born a dancer.

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

I don't want to do anything Freudian.

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

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

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

I read Russian literature a lot.

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've been hurt quite a few times.

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 belong to a nonprofit organization because when you receive grants, you have to make such great compromises with your artistic plans.

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

Your heart is very much connected to your mind.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Running a company is pretty demanding.

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

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

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.

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

I have the life of seven cats.

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.

Dance is one of the most revealing art forms.

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

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

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

The more injuries you get, the smarter you get.

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 go a lot to see young people downtown in little theaters. It's great. If you start somebody's career, it's so exciting.

Dancing is my obsession. My life.

Working is living to me.

I like to make my own mistakes.

Dancers are made, not born.

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

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.

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

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

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

I am not the first straight dancer or the last.

I have made mistakes.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

People dance at any age.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 am a performer. I go on stage and make a fool of myself.

To walk across the street is a risk.

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