Suzanne Farrell Quotations

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.

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

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 learned to love dance for its own sake.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Once I started dancing, I was not the spoiled brat or the rebellious child that I was as a child.

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

I could work out a lot of my emotions by going to class and dancing.

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

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

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

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.

That the work involved, the willingness to take chances, the commitment, the opportunity to get on stage and make people happy, was more important than becoming famous, or even what I was dancing.

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.

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

I can't read a note. I have lots of discipline, but I can't sit still at any instrument.

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

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

So I think it is rather strange that I got into ballet, something that I hadn't seen.

My feelings started to change when I realized that dancing was getting inside my body, emotionally, as well as physically.

I was grateful that I had dancing to fall back on. It was my survival tactic. It was my friend. It was always there.

I don't believe you can be an honest performer and a spectator at the same time.

It brought out in me the person whom I had the potential to become. I think that's why I loved it for its own sake, not to be a ballerina.

Research showed that the average American was only eating about one serving a day of whole grains.

My mother was very interested in giving her daughters the advantage of music and dance, if we had an interest in it. My father was not.

I still feel like a 15 year-old girl coming to New York. Dancing does that to you. I think it keeps you really young.

Whole grains are just that, the entire grain including the bran, the germ, and the endosperm. Lots of refined carbohydrates are fortified to add back some of the nutrients, but you can't add back all the fiber.

When you're choosing nuts, make sure to get them raw and unsalted.

To have been part of that evening -- and now I am truly honored and privileged. I loved dancing and how fortunate I am to have had a career I loved doing.

The wonderful thing about life it that there will always be variables. You have to see them and be aware of them to know how to react to them.

Although nuts have a lot of benefits, they're also high in calories that can add up fast.

It's a wonderful thing to be able to dance, to tell your body what you want it to do.

I liked math. Counting was easy for me, which was good, because a lot of the ballets have involved difficult counts.

In general, nuts are good, ... But walnuts are great because they have high levels of omega-3 fatty acids. Other nuts don't.

If you use butter or margarine now, just switch over to one of these sterol-fortified spreads.

I just heard music and wanted to dance, wanted to be in a company, and wanted to make it my life.

If I meet people who don't like fish, I don't think it's a good idea to force them to eat it,

And 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.

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 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.

Although we do come from a silent profession, it is important for us to verbalize what we want to say. (As I tell my students): you could love someone all your life, but if you never say it how are they going to know? There comes a point when you have to say what you mean, which makes you scream louder when you dance.

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

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

In fact, ballet companies did not exist in the Midwest when I was a child.

Treat each class as if it were your first.

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

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

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

Good theater should always send people away feeling changed.

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.

Dancers are a great breed of people. And they really want to dance so you don't have to beg them to work. However, dancers sometimes build walls around themselves because they are presenting themselves all the time: dancing is very much a confession.

When you are on stage in front of an audience, you want to engage the entire crowd. If a thousand people are in the theater, you need to dance a thousand different ways, not one-thousandth of a way.

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 Latin, I like languages, I liked all the myths, and the Roman tales that we were required to translate in Latin, and all these interesting people who were never quite what they thought they would be or seemed to be.

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.

I was very much of a tomboy.

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 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.

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

... the arts are the hospitals for our souls ...

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