Nothing is harder to create than brilliant comic ballets, except maybe brilliant full-evening comic ballets. Robert Gottlieb Read Quote
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 Read Quote
We see a new generation of Russian authors who are not divided from their Western contemporaries either culturally or philosophically. Robert Gottlieb Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Almost the first thing you see after entering the Houdini exhibition at the Jewish Museum is a large-screen film of Harry Houdini hanging by his ankles upside-down from a tall building, high over a sea of men in fedoras, and thrashing his way out of a straitjacket. Robert Gottlieb Read Quote
How do you rate works of genius? Partly by personal inclination, partly by accepted wisdom, partly by popularity. Robert Gottlieb Read Quote
Many people say to me, particularly about my dance writing, ‘It sounds just like you.’ But it sounds just like me after I’ve made it sound like me. Robert Gottlieb Read Quote
Increasingly, editing means going to lunch. It means editing with a credit card, not with a pencil. Robert Gottlieb Read Quote
At a certain point, you have to face the fact that you’ve turned into an old fart. Robert Gottlieb Read Quote
