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.

Journalists who are devoted to strictly factual reporting take particular pleasure from satirical news outlets that have the liberty to laugh and even mock the hypocrisy that reporters and editors must simply observe without comment.

It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.

If my son came to me years from now and told me, 'I'm gay,' I'd say, 'That's wonderful. I'm so glad you know who you are.' But if he said, 'I want to be a woman,' I would say, 'Ahhh. This is gonna be hard. Let's get started.' Because it doesn't matter that that's where happiness lies - it's on the other side of a lot of struggle.

Short stories consume you faster. They're connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality. I know how tough they are as a form, but they're also a total joy.