Suzanne Farrell Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I was very much of a tomboy.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.