Sylvie Guillem Quotes

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 do eventually want to get back into performing, but right now it's more fun for me to dance for myself.

I've always looked at my career as an athlete would look at his. I won't play forever. Some don't know when to walk away, but the smart ones do.

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.

Performing is an experience, for me, that is as humbling as it is energizing.

On stage, I think I'm 35. Working takes over my whole body and I become a younger man - that's why I won't stop.

An 'OMG' of mine would probably be speaking on stage and performing in front of thousands of people!

There's a tendency, when you're directing yourself, not to give the performance as much care, because you feel like there's too much focus on yourself, or that all these people are just standing around setting everything up, waiting for you.

Well, as you know, I'm really only happy when I'm on stage.

I've been performing since 1955. I'm going to have to keep performing till I die because I'm not going to die in some rocking chair with a big ol' beer belly.

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me.

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

If I wasn't performing, I wasn't alive. That's the truth. My parents had absolutely no interest in the business, but they knew it made me happy, so they said 'Go for it, girl!'

This is my religion. I take long breaks now when I don't perform and I am not myself when I am not performing.

I don't even know if I exist offstage.

Performing doesn't come that naturally to me, even though I've done it for years.

On stage, you have to have incredible confidence, or you would stop doing it. But I don't think I will ever get to the point where I go, 'I know exactly what I am doing,' and I don't think I want to.

I'm a performer. We don't retire.

I just would like to keep singing. As soon as I'm not singing well, I hope that I know it, so that I can get off the stage and leave what I have done. I hope I'll know, and if I don't, I hope somebody tells me.

I don't miss 'Saturday Night Live.' I feel less of a need for the fulfillment that performance used to give... I don't have to do everything right away. As long as I can walk and jump, I'll still perform, but I no longer feel such a compulsion.

My wife asked me if I ever thought I would ever retire from stand-up. And I thought about it, and I was like, 'No, because it's my job; it's what I do, and I enjoy it.' It's still the most challenging thing for me to do.

People say my world is dark. No, there's a lot of lightness in my world. But I know very well that I'm not normal when I'm performing.

I just try to play with more focus on myself; I don't worry too much about the other things that maybe gave me too much pressure in the past.

One think that you notice about anyone that gets up on stage is that they don't really have a lot of self-awareness. It's kind of a trait that performers don't have because you just kinda just have to let go and do whatever you want to do on stage.

I don't have an expiry date. My body is my answer - when I see that I can no longer compete, when my head is not in it anymore, it will be the time to stop.