“This is who she is. She is this movement here, these steps, this turn, this raising of this arm. It's a waste of time to think of oneself in any other terms. For what of us, what of reality, cannot implode, evaporate, contort, evade, disappear? But the body doesn't lie. At a certain point it's impossible to dance loneliness without feeling genuinely lonely.”

“What I was thinking, in that strange way you can think without words while you are dancing, think in glyphs, think in numbers, was how stupid it is that any of us are here, living. What an absurd game we play with ourselves, as if it mattered. We are all mad, all insane, all deluded. It is all for nothing, really, in the end.”

“I am here. I am in the present tense. I'm not always here, and sometimes here is a very difficult place. Sometimes it is a labyrinth, or a Minotaur, or a rope I can neither let go of nor follow. It's hard to find the right words, but I guess I would say that it's something like feeling the floor. And that it is my privilege to feel it.”

“In classical pas de deux, the man controls everything. He picks up the girl. He puts her down. He turns her, takes her weight, stops her, and she must always go where he leads. The woman submits to all this completely. But her submission is not feeble. In fact, the only reason she can submit so utterly is because she is very strong in herself. In her center. She does not collapse, or cave, or stutter-step, or flop. No, she holds herself very consciously, very confidently. She is centered within her own weight. So the man always knows where she is. He can feel her. He can absorb her strength.”

“I should think people would be disappointed if they watched that kind of movie and then came to see us dance and none of us slit our wrists onstage or made ourselves vomit or got on the backs of motorcycles while wearing tutus and started fucking each other.”

“...the overture began. God! Strings! Oboes! Timpani! Are you fucking kidding me? Why, when we know what human beings are capable of doing, do we not turn our collective heads in shame at the sight of rich housewives screaming at each other on television?”

“But if life is what can be called the time you spend preparing for the event, and then dealing with how the event went, then what would you call the event itself? Is that not life? Is that not the best part?”