I like new ballets because they're totally new. As you get older, new experiences are harder and harder to come by, so it's pretty great to have a new experience.

At the ballet, you really feel like you're in the presence of something outside the rest of your life. Higher than the rest of your life.

I never wanted to do biography just to tell the life of a famous man. I always wanted to use the life of a man to examine political power, because democracy shapes our lives

The Senate is an unknowing world

Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.

Robert Moses wasn't elected to anything. We're taught that in a democracy power comes from being elected. He had more power than anyone, and he held it for 48 years

The moment the curtain rose on that first ballet, I knew something wonderful and new had come into my life. I can still see the first scene. The ballet was Divertimento No. 15

The New York City Ballet is obviously speaking to a whole new generation and bringing it the same wonder and beauty that it brought previous generations

Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery.

I deliberately made an effort not to become an expert on the ballet.

I don't think of my books as being biographies. I never had any interest in doing a book just to write the life of a great man. I had zero interest in that. My interest is in power. How power works.

When can one attain samadhi (eternal blissful continuous peace)? It comes when one lets go of the things that he loves the most.

Mind chatter: a clatter of left-brain rains of doubt, worry, guilt, shame in a thunderstorm of fear. Forgive the chatter, clear your mind.

I had to come to terms with the fact that I wouldn’t have peace with myself until I found a way to like myself.

We ask our brain to stop worrying, stop obsessing, stop dreaming the same scary dreams again and again. But our brain rarely takes requests.

My advice to someone to follow in my footsteps is to have patience. I've been doing this for twelve years.

I don't know what you're going through life doing if you're not really trying to collect some really great memories.

You should never be in the company of anyone with whom you would not want to die.

The world has been gradually reducing its nuclear arsenals. Testing must stop so that progress on the destruction of nuclear weapons may begin.

What they call you is one thing. What you answer to is something else.

On my show, I'm definitely the youngest one. So going from a show where everyone is over 30, to the movie, where everyone was like 20, 25, it was like summer camp.