Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" 'Ocean's Kingdom' is a fairy story with no subtext, no resonance - it's not about anything except its water-logged plot. "
Robert Gottlieb
Kingdom
Ocean
Story
Related Quotes:
" How do you rate works of genius? Partly by personal inclination, partly by accepted wisdom, partly by popularity. "
Robert Gottlieb
Rate
You
Wisdom
" Writing happened to me. I didn't decide to start writing or to be a writer. I never wanted to be a writer. "
Robert Gottlieb
Decide
Start
Never
" Editing requires you to be always open, always responding. It is very important, for example, not to allow yourself to want the writer to write a certain kind of book. Sometimes that's hard. "
Robert Gottlieb
Yourself
Book
Important
" There are a few writers whose lives and personalities are so large, so fascinating, that there's no such thing as a boring biography of them - you can read every new one that comes along, good or bad, and be caught up in the story all over again. "
Robert Gottlieb
Bad
Story
New
" Of the great singing stars of the 1940s and '50s, only one - Nat King Cole - died young, at age 45. "
Robert Gottlieb
Age
Singing
Stars
" Just as I was turning fifteen, in the spring of 1946, my parents took me to see 'The Glass Menagerie,' well into its year-long run. I had seen a number of shows on Broadway by then, but nothing like this - because there was nothing like this on Broadway. "
Robert Gottlieb
Run
Spring
Me
" 'Empty Moves' is elegantly and coolly inventive. Two pairs of dancers shadow each other in slow, deliberate rearrangements and manipulations of legs and torsos, only occasionally switching partners or breaking free of the formal patterning. "
Robert Gottlieb
Dancers
Two
Slow
" For me, the real pleasure in writing is in having an excuse to pursue my curiosity about people who have meant something to me. "
Robert Gottlieb
Curiosity
People
Writing
" Some readers took 'Heaven's My Destination' as a satire on Christianity and the Midwest, but today it reads like a loving comedy. "
Robert Gottlieb
Heaven
Today
Loving
" Acting has changed since the nineteen-forties. "
Robert Gottlieb
Changed
Since
Acting
" Audiences love Paul Taylor, and so do I. Not everything, and not always, but year in, year out, he gives me more concentrated pleasure than I get from any other dance company. "
Robert Gottlieb
Year
Me
Love
" Dance Theatre of Harlem has done a lot of good things well, a lot of good things badly, and a lot of bad things - it doesn't matter how. "
Robert Gottlieb
Good
Dance
Theatre
" In today's world, it never looks good when you're suing somebody who earned $20,000 for writing a book over a period of a year or two. "
Robert Gottlieb
You
World
Today
" Dickens was born in 1812 and died in 1870, having produced fifteen novels, many of which can confidently be called great, as well as having accomplished outstanding work in activities into which his insatiable need to expend his vast energies - to achieve, to prevail - carried him: journalism, editing, acting, social reform. "
Robert Gottlieb
Journalism
Acting
Born
" The man Dickens, whom the world at large thought it knew, stood for all the Victorian virtues - probity, kindness, hard work, sympathy for the down-trodden, the sanctity of domestic life - even as his novels exposed the violence, hypocrisy, greed, and cruelty of the Victorian age. "
Robert Gottlieb
Life
Kindness
Hard Work
" 'Beloved Renegade' is a meditation on Walt Whitman, on tenderness, on dying. "
Robert Gottlieb
Renegade
Dying
Meditation
" The best seat in the house often depends on the ballet. For instance, much of the first act of 'The Nutcracker' is domestic and small scale, so it's great to sit up close. But the second act features elaborate scenery and choreography, which are better to observe from a distance. "
Robert Gottlieb
Better
Great
Scenery
" Has there ever been a dance career with more ups and downs than Twyla Tharp's? Or with more varied ambitions? Or larger ambition? "
Robert Gottlieb
Ups And Downs
Dance
Career
" The 1920s brought not only the Charleston but the flat chest. "
Robert Gottlieb
Flat
1920s
Charleston
" The early giants of modern dance - Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis - barely left traces of their art. "
Robert Gottlieb
Modern
Left
Art
" When you can't follow a ballet's action, you can always read the program notes. "
Robert Gottlieb
Action
Always
You
" You don't have to be a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute to figure out that when you title a memoir of your parents 'Them,' you're performing an act of distancing. "
Robert Gottlieb
Parents
Your
You
" Young women today, as in the fifties, find themselves entering the big world and having to make choices. "
Robert Gottlieb
Choices
Today
World
" Despite the rigid classicism of the famous Paris Opera school and company, the French have done more than their share to unmoor la Danse from its traditions and standards. "
Robert Gottlieb
Paris
Famous
Done
" Paris, as always, is swarming with Americans, and these days, it's also swarming with hamburgers. Oddly, though, it's not typically the Americans who are pursuing the perfect burger on the perfect bun with the obligatory side of perfect coleslaw; the Americans are pursuing the perfect blanquette de veau. "
Robert Gottlieb
Paris
Perfect
Always
" How the English love playing at being naughty boys! "
Robert Gottlieb
How
English
Playing
" Tolstoy may be right about happy and unhappy families, but in ballet, it works the opposite way: All good ballets are different from each other and all bad ones are alike, at least in one crucial respect - they're all empty. "
Robert Gottlieb
Unhappy
Way
Bad
" You may feel that Peter Martins' 'Beauty' is too compressed and inexpressive, but it's loyal to the text. "
Robert Gottlieb
May
Text
You
" 'Paquita' has a patchy history, beginning in 1846, and a patchy plot. "
Robert Gottlieb
Plot
History
Beginning
" One of the odder byways of nonfiction is the dishy memoir by those who have served the great or the near-great. "
Robert Gottlieb
Those
Memoir
Great