Fate is like a train. When it flies past, you can choose if you want to get on it or not, to say no or say yes.

The problems I had with the Paris Opera Ballet are a thing of the past.

Dancers should realise that they are really lucky. Dancing is not a job. It's people who are chosen. And you must realise that you are chosen. Sometimes I see a performance that makes me really angry - I think, 'Those people are lucky, and they don't realise it.'

I had no sense of having reached some goal because I was an etoile at the Paris Opera. My ambition, if you can call it that, was to discover and learn and be excited by what I was doing. If I didn't have that, I would find it elsewhere.

Being able to take control of my life again, take control of what I'm eating and my fitness is enlightening and empowering.

Small changes in diet don't have much effect on preventing coronary heart disease and cancer. But bigger changes in diet and lifestyle may prevent heart attacks in almost everyone.

Much in the way Olympic athletes optimize their game by paying an enormous - borderline maniacal - amount of attention to things like diet, exercise, sleep, and of course the essential R&R, we all would do well to pay more attention to those key aspects of our lives that comprise our overall health equation.

The doctor told me, 'You have breast cancer.' I heard the cancer part first - it was only later that I heard the breast part. I couldn't believe it.