Mikhail Baryshnikov Quotes

“My mother had a son from previous marriage and her husband died in Second World War.”

“I like to go to anybody else's birthday, and if I'm invited I'm a good guest. But I never celebrate my birthdays. I really don't care.”

“Dances have a second and third life. You feel they are never ready. They always have a chance for another life.”

“I found that dance, music, and literature is how I made sense of the world... it pushed me to think of things bigger than life's daily routines... to think beyond what is immediate or convenient.”

“I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. I played their game, pretending. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB. Horrifying.”

“Fundamentals are the building blocks of fun.”

“The problem is not making up the steps but deciding which ones to keep.”

“I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to to dance better than myself.”

“If you love dance and you have the gift of teaching, teaching is super amazing and important because my teachers planted that seed in me. As a teacher you understand the difference or the definition of a Baryshnikov or a Gregory Hines, so teaching is really important and very necessary.”

“LonelinessIt's Hell for us to draw the fettersOf life in alienation, stiff.All people prefer to share gladness,And nobody - to share grief.As a king of air, I'm lone here,The pain lives in my heart, so grim,And I can see that, to the fearOf fate, years pass me by like dreams;And comes again with, touched by gold,The same dream, gloomy one and old.I see a coffin, black and sole,It waits: why to detain the world?There will be not a sad reflection,There will be (I am betting on)Much more gaily celebrationWhen I am dead, than - born.”