Robert Gottlieb Great Quotations

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Of the great singing stars of the 1940s and '50s, only one - Nat King Cole - died young, at age 45.

In 1998, Vanity Fair asked me to write a big piece for them on the 50th anniversary of the New York City Ballet. My life, to a great extent, had been spent at and with the New York City Ballet, and I decided to try it. It was very scary, writing about something I loved so much and had such strong opinions about.

The Kirov is a great ballet company because it has so many terrific dancers, but it doesn't always know what to do with them.

City Ballet has to develop choreographers of stature and a new approach to coaching before everything we value about it fades away and, in the great tradition of the Cheshire Cat, there's nothing left but Peter Martins' smile.

City Ballet remains a great company in perpetual artistic crisis.

The finest chroniclers of the great and the near-great have often been courtiers - the Duc de Saint-Simon, for instance, or Lady Murasaki.