“Dance is the only art of which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made.”

“When we encounter an unexpected challenge of threat the only way to save ourselves is to hold on tight to the people around us and not let go.”

“Everything about ypur movements precision and timing, which is what gymnastics is about.”

“A species in which everyone was General Patton would not succeed, any more than would a race in which everyone was Vincent van Gogh. I prefer to think that the planet needs athletes, philosophers, sex symbols, painters, scientists; it needs the warmhearted, the hardhearted, the coldhearted, and the weakhearted. It needs those who can devote their lives to studying how many droplets of water are secreted by the salivary glands of dogs under which circumstances, and it needs those who can capture the passing impression of cherry blossoms in a fourteen-syllable poem or devote twenty-five pages to the dissection of a small boy's feelings as he lies in bed in the dark waiting for his mother to kiss him goodnight...”

“The Other"She had too much so with a smile you took some.Of everything she had you hadAbsolutely nothing, so you took some.At first, just a little.Still she had so much she made you feelYour vacuum, which nature abhorred,So you took your fill, for nature's sake.Because her great luck made you feel unluckyYou had redressed the balance, which meantNow you had some too, for yourself.As seemed only fair. Still her ambitionClaimed the natural right to screw you up Like a crossed out page, lossed into a basket.Somebody, on behalf of the gods,Had to correct that hubris.A little touch of hatred steadied the nerves.Everything she had won, the happiness of it,You collectedAs your compensationFor having lost. Which left her absolutely Nothing. Even her life wasTrapped in the heap you took. She had nothing.Too late you saw what had happened.It made no difference that she was dead.Now that you had all she had ever hadYou had much too much. Only you Saw her smile, as she took some.At first, just a little.”

“We move out over the ocean, and …I am looking straight down at the waves underneath me. The mid-morning sun is low and each crest flashes silver, silver, until it crashed into the rocky beach….and turns to foam. The rocks are broken into sand, and each grain …eventually…is broken down further.And as each grief crashes into us, we are broken too. We are rendered down and broken apart. Maybe some scientist could determine our ages by the size and number of pieces into which we’ve been broken? Maybe she could look at our pieces and measure the weight in impact of every grief and joy and agony. Maybe.”

“Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being "in love", which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.”