Quotes

[explaining why he quit ballet as a professional career] I was too tall and big-boned and never had good feet.

[on his father's death from heart failure after Ross dropped out of school] The truth will look very ugly in print, but the fact is that I don't feel guilty about what happened. I say this in spite of the fact that certain relatives--fortunately not my sister or my stepmother--accused me of causing my father's death. I would do the same thing again, because there was no other alternative for me. It was almost a primordial urge, like getting back to the sea.

[on working with Goldie Hawn on Protocol (1984)] Everyone knows that the woman is super-talented. She is also a saint. "Protocol" was a difficult production with lots of locations, a big cast and a tight schedule. Goldie was wonderful throughout.

[on T.R. Baskin (1971)] I was fooled by the script. I discovered in working on the script that it was like quicksand: the harder we worked, the more we investigated, the more damage we did.

I spent all those years in ballet, and as Balanchine [ballet dancer George Balanchine] said, ballet is women. I'm used to perceiving women as independent and often more than our equals.

"Herbert was a great director because he took his knowledge of dance into the movement of acting. He mastered flamboyance and sensitivity. He was a [dance] gypsy who at the end understood it all. I will miss him deeply." --Shirley MacLaine

[on his broken ankle as a danseur] It didn't heal right, and that . . . was the end of my dancing career.