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" 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

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" 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

" The first time the Kirov ballet was seen in America was on Sept. 11, 1961. The ballet was 'Swan Lake.' The ballerina was Inna Zubkovskaya. The place was the old Met, on what must have been one of the hottest nights of the year, and there was no air-conditioning. "

Robert Gottlieb

" I hated Matthew Bourne's 'Swan Lake' when it first turned up, and then when it was televised, and then when it returned. "

Robert Gottlieb

" 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

" How the English love playing at being naughty boys! "

Robert Gottlieb

" There are certain historical figures of such importance that we need to know everything about them, which is why books about Napoleon, Lincoln, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I, and the great religious founders continue to proliferate; these lives require constant reevaluation and interpretation. "

Robert Gottlieb

" Every great dance company, even when it seems poised in perfect balance, needs constant renewal of both repertory and performers. "

Robert Gottlieb

" What guarantees - or at least semi-guarantees - good ballets is good choreographers, and they are thin on the ground. "

Robert Gottlieb

" Ballet in September used to be dead as a dodo. Now, with City Ballet's ingenious decision to give us four weeks of repertory in the early fall, having cut down on the relentlessly long spring season when dancers, critics and audiences droop on the vine, we wake up after the dog days of August with something to look at. "

Robert Gottlieb

" Choreographers, historically, are born, not made - their talents drive them to it. "

Robert Gottlieb

" Twyla Tharp set her sights on ballet, and ballet, hungry for major talent, succumbed. "

Robert Gottlieb

" We know that Diana Vishneva is a phenomenon of strength and style, and she certainly has earned the right to stretch her talents as best she can. "

Robert Gottlieb

" Dance stories, unlike those in opera, are usually simple. "

Robert Gottlieb

" One of the eternal mysteries of ballet is how untalented choreographers find backers for their work, and then find good dancers to perform in it. Is it irresistible charm? Chutzpah? Pure determination? Blackmail? Or are so many supposedly knowledgeable people just plain blind? "

Robert Gottlieb

" 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

" We see a new generation of Russian authors who are not divided from their Western contemporaries either culturally or philosophically. "

Robert Gottlieb

" Soledad Barrio is clearly a master - of thrilling steps and passionate movement. She stalks, she circles, she struts, she snaps her head - her feet drill the stage. "

Robert Gottlieb

" With its vastly complicated plot and its immense cast of characters swirling around the case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce that has been grinding away in the Court of Chancery for decades, 'Bleak House' is, for many readers, Dickens's greatest novel. "

Robert Gottlieb

" 'Black Swan' does what Hollywood movies have always done - it spends its energies on getting some surface things right while getting everything important wrong. Darren Aronofsky, the director, applies the same techniques and the same sensibility here as he did with 'The Wrestler,' only with a prettier protagonist. "

Robert Gottlieb

" One of the odder byways of nonfiction is the dishy memoir by those who have served the great or the near-great. "

Robert Gottlieb

" The early giants of modern dance - Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis - barely left traces of their art. "

Robert Gottlieb

" 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

" 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

" The mysteries and scandals of the Kremlin are nothing compared to the mysteries and scandals of the Bolshoi. "

Robert Gottlieb

" The first movement ballerina should be a paradigm of strength and authority. "

Robert Gottlieb

" 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

" For Russians, to whom Pushkin's poem 'Eugene Onegin' is sacred text, the ballet's story and personae are as familiar and filled with meaning as, for instance, 'Romeo' and 'Hamlet' are for us. Russians know whole stretches of it by heart, the way we know Shakespeare and Italians know Dante. "

Robert Gottlieb

" Ballet is like any other art form in that we all start out knowing nothing about it. "

Robert Gottlieb

" As an editor, I have to be tactful, of course. "

Robert Gottlieb

" What makes a publishing house great? The easy answer is the consistency with which it produces books of value over a lengthy period of time. "

Robert Gottlieb