Sylvie Guillem Quotes

I have never wanted to give up performing on stage, but one day the tours will be over.

I knew it was time to pack it in. I was in my 60s... I could still sing but I didn't want to get to that point where people feel sorry for me.

I don't want to be the oldest performer in captivity... I don't want to look like a little old man dancing out there.

I don't want to be 70 years old jumping around onstage.

From the first time you can look in the paper and you accept that you're the entertainment for some people that night, it becomes so much more enjoyable to play live.

I don't want to end up being a circus act, doing my most famous tricks when I'm 70.

It's definitely hard to say good-bye to a character that you've played for a long time.

More is asked of you on stage. It's no way to make a living. But it's like a bullfight. You find out who can do it and who can't.

I know too well how much I am going to miss football after my career for me to put up my own barriers.

While I enjoy it, I will continue to go onstage. While I contribute something, fine. I don't want to be dragging my feet. I don't want to become pathetic, but I think I will be lucid enough. I'll know when to stop.

I don't want to go on forever and leaving the sport is the hardest decision.

Obviously, everyone knows it is hard to hang it up, but I'm definitely going to try and do it the right way and not like how combat athletes have done and hold on too long for every last fleeting moment. I don't want to be one of those people.

Whether it's writing songs, being on stage, being interviewed, meeting fans - I just try to be myself, which is kind of exhausting because it almost feels like it never shuts off.

If you're a lead singer, then you can't afford to be sensitive. On stage, everyone looks at the lead singer, even if you don't want them to - in America, they have those massive follow spots on you all the time; it does your head in. So, if you are a lead singer and you don't toughen up, you're in the wrong job, and you have to get out.

You don't step on stage to eat; you go there to be eaten.

The more I go onstage, the more quiet I am before, because I intend to go onstage and slaughter.

When you're doing a show on stage, and they show you a red light, that means you have 5 minutes left. At some clubs, they hold a candle up in the back. That's the worst method. You're up here, and then you see a floating candle. "Oh, no! This place is haunted!" I can't be funny when I'm frightened.

I don't really drink before a show. That's my only drinking rule. Especially with today's cell-phone cameras, there's no win to it.

I would like to think I will be a guy who knows when it's time to stop. I don't want to be a guy who hung on and hung on. I do not have a goal in mind of a year or a statistic.

The actor has the advantage - or the liability - of knowing, "It's going to be my face up there on the frickin' screen, so I better keep my wits about me. Nobody's going to care that I was bad because I was not happy. They're only going to know I'm bad."

I wouldn't want to try to make a living as an actor. I think actors... I give them a lot of credit for what they go through, but putting myself on the line like that would make me crazy.

I've always felt kind of safe on stage, protected. I've talked to other performers about this and they feel the same things, particularly in the live arena. I never get nervous going on stage to do a play. Doing film or television I'll have more butterflies.

I have been doing this [acting] for a really long time, so I've come to expect things to take a really long time. You get to a place where you do your job and then you dust your hands off and say, "Okay, my job is done. Now, it's in the stars. We'll see what happens." There's nothing I can do to affect it.

When I started performing I was like, "Holy hell, how am I going to survive this?" I was giving it my all in 15 minutes but now I had to do it for two hours.

failure in the theater is more public, more brilliant, more unreal than in any other field.