Top 127 Quotes & Sayings by Mikhail Baryshnikov

Dancing is my obsession. My life.

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

Your heart is very much connected to your mind.

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

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

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

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

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

Running a company is pretty demanding.

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.

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

Nobody is born a dancer.

I am not the first straight dancer or the last.

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

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

Working is living to me.

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 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.

I've been hurt quite a few times.

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.

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

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

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.

The more injuries you get, the smarter you get.

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

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

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 stand authority.

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

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

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

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

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

I have the life of seven cats.

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

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 have made mistakes.

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

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

People dance at any age.

I read Russian literature a lot.

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.

Dancers are made, not born.

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

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

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

I don't want to do anything Freudian.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dance is one of the most revealing art forms.

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.

To walk across the street is a risk.

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