I want to be happy, to look back and feel I danced well at the end of my career and didn't dwindle off. It would be too sad.

I am just so thankful that my mom was a fantastic mom. She wasn't a stage mother; she didn't push me. She was happy if I was happy. We are so different. I was very shy; my mom did all the talking. She was my strength. She never expected that I would be this ballerina.

When I hung up my toe shoes, I didn't look back. In all my years, I have never looked back.

In Europe, a great dancer might be on the same level as a movie star. In America, not so.

Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.

For quite a while, it didn't feel right. How could I feel joy when I lost the love of my life? I'm learning that those two things can co-exist. It will never be the same joy, but it doesn't mean there won't be joy.

Nature best teaches how to pray, and how to reverence all the gifts the Almighty has given us. She is like a vast outspread handkerchief, embroidered with God's eternal name, on which we may dry alike our tears of sorrow and of joy; she turns weeping into ecstasy, and fills our hearts with speechless, quiet reverence and resignation.

Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.