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Being in ballet class, being on the stage, being surrounded by my peers at American Ballet Theater every day, keeps me so humble and grounded. Being in ballet class, I feel, is like this meditation for me every morning.

I don't feel like my life is that of a superstar! Every day I wake up, I take the train, I go to my ballet class. My everyday life is pretty normal.

Ballet became this escape for me. I feel like I was on my own a lot. I was searching for stability, so I was going off on my own and imagining what I thought stability was. Ballet became a way for me to cope.

At the ballet, you really feel like you're in the presence of something outside the rest of your life. Higher than the rest of your life.

I do what I love to do at the moment. If I wake up tomorrow and decide I want to dance, that's what I'd do. Or design clothes. I think I'd throw myself into whatever I'm doing now. It's not about abandoning what I was doing before, or giving up. It's about knowing that if I die tomorrow, I lived the way I wanted to.

I think there's an inevitable fact that I somehow absorb part of what I'm doing, because that's what you're constantly thinking about, and that's what's in your veins, and that's what you get up at 4:30 in the morning for and fall into bed after.

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

I frequently go to the ballet, but I don't miss it in the sense that I wish I were still dancing.

Exercise plays a huge role in keeping me sane, and that's my primary motivation to 'find time.'

Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery.