I'm a big fan of all the Boston guys that are acting - Matt Damon , Ben Affleck, Mark Wahlberg - they made a great career out of it, and they found a way to do it and still be cool guys, so that's kind of where I want to be.

Co-parenting is going great with Britney. The schedule has been worked out over time, and we talk when we need to. It's always about the boys - mostly school stuff - and we make sure we stay on top of that. It's going great.

The more I talk, the more I come out and people get to know who I am and what I'm about, it's only gonna help. And if you don't like me, hey, cool. Everything in life is 50/50. I accept the good and the bad and just move on.

Every work of art needs a spine – an underlying theme, a motive for coming into existence. It doesn't have to be apparent to the audience. But you need it at the start of the creative process to guide you and keep you going.

Creativity is not just for artists. It's for businesspeople looking for a new way to close a sale; it's for engineers trying to solve a problem; it's for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way.

We are not known by our bank balances or who our parents are. It is ultimately we who have to prove ourselves. It is not important to own a particular brand of car. But we should be a brand in ourselves. Each of us is unique.

I had learned to have a perfect nausea for the theatre: the continual repetition of the same words and the same gestures, night after night, and the caprices, the way of looking at life, and the entire rigmarole disgusted me.

I've made a couple of comments about fame, and my kids are going to be put in - in, you know, working at Taco Bell when they're 16 so they know what a real job is like, and - and know what it's like to - to really earn money.

My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education, which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity, and there really was no judgment.

A creative person has to create. It doesn't really matter what you create. If such a dancer wanted to go out and build the cactus gardens where he could, in Mexico, let him do that, but something that is creative has to go on.

For me, dance is a nutrient, you know, it's something that I need, it's something like, you know, the air we breath, the food we eat. These are things that we need for survival. For me, dance is a nutrient. It's my nourishment.

I think it started since I was born, I always had a need to express myself, you know, as a human being, and I found that it felt right when I expressed myself through art, dance, through acting, so it kind of happened naturally.

I met Drew Barrymore, and she was so cool. She told me, 'I know I just had my baby three weeks ago, and that's why I'm emotional, but I cried when you performed.' And then she pulled out a tissue and said, 'Look, I was sobbing.'

With 'Dance Moms' in L.A., we film on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. When we film in Pittsburgh, we film the same days, but we still dance in our studio when we're not filming, so I'm dancing every day except Sunday.

Whether it's a painter finding his way each morning to the easel, or a medical researcher returning daily to the laboratory, the routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bolt of inspiration, maybe more.

The noblest art is the nude. This truth is recognized by all, and followed by painters, sculptors and poets. Only the dancer has forgotten it, who should remember it, as the instrument of [the dance] art is the human body itself.

I'm happy that people think of me as the greatest tap-dancer that ever lived. But it's just a rumor. Because the greatest dancer that ever lived knows everything, and I don't. I'm still learning. I still have a lot of work to do.

I don't believe in rushing and saying this is done and over with. That form of rebellion doesn't make sense to me. I've always attempted to familiarize myself with the traditions, and consider that a responsibility of the artist.

When I started thinking seriously about learning the rules of narrative, I thought, 'You've learned the rules of dancing from the ballet; what's the matter with learning the laws of theater from the people who know how to do it?'

It's very difficult for me to do fund raising for my own organization if I'm working for other companies because sponsors will say, 'Well, hey, man, if she's doing a ballet for Ballet Theatre, we'll give money to Ballet Theatre.'

When television killed comedy and love stories, the movie makers went in slugging. They offered the downbeat, the degenerate as competition. This seems to me to be a sad campaign for Hollywood to use to combat box office disaster.

On the other hand in London you can get an audience that desires dance to go as far as it can go: they've seen the bricks of ideas built over a period so therefore there is an acceptance of what otherwise might seem out on a limb.

Whenever I feel I'm working in a groove it's invariably because I feel I am being the benefactor in the situation rather than the beneficiary. I am sharing my art with others, lending my craft to theirs, interest-free with no IOU.

I want to inspire people to be better, to do better, to dance better, and I want to help to grow this next generation. That's something that's really, really important to me, and I just want to be freaking good at everything I do.

You don't stop when a musical number comes up and do the number and then take up the scene where you left off. It all moves forward. Your work as an actor was part of your work as a dancer as well. It was dialogue through movement.

I'm a beauty guru, I just love all of that stuff. We have a makeup artist for 'Dance Moms' that touches us up and stuff, but I love doing my own makeup; sometimes I do my friends', too. My favorite is doing eye shadow and eyeliner.

Skill is how you close the gap between what you can see in your mind's eye and what you can produce; the more skill you have, the more sophisticated and accomplished your ideas can be. With absolute skill comes absolute confidence.

I write. I have read a great deal. I enjoy books. I like the wit of languages. Even French I like. I like to be able to think in different modes. I like to be able to use the language a great deal and carry on rehearsals in French.

Dancing is so wonderful. Once they start the music, your whole day, if it's been rotten, seems to melt away. You get carried away in the tune that you're moving to. It's a marvelous catharsis, to be able to get on top and tap dance.

At the time the quickest way to establish yourself as an American was to throw a little bit of tap into your dance - even when it wasn't called for. But what also helped me was the fact that I was dancing in roles that I had played.

The red carpet stuff is brilliant because it's so fun. In terms of exposure, I think it's something that you can never get used to because you don't know what you're being exposed to at all times. You just don't know what to expect.

The Democratic party is one that I've always observed. I have struggled greatly in life from the day I was born, and I am honored to be a part of something that focuses on working class citizens and molds them into a proud specimen.

I've noticed that the less makeup I wear, the less I need it because my skin starts to look better - my face doesn't break out as often and I have fewer skin problems because I'm not clogging your pores every single day with makeup.

I have been guilty of watching Westerns without acknowledging that Native Americans have gone through the same madness as African Americans. Isn't it extraordinary that sometimes the most offended have not seen others being offended?

So many dancers paint. I used to paint. I started again recently. While I was dancing, I was very busy with my career. Start something else that makes use of your creative ability because if you don't you will die inside as a person.

So the only things I was being allowed to audition for were small roles in comedies. It broke my heart. No one would see me for anything else. I knew, in order to open up my career, I had to leave or that's all I would ever be given.

I've been dancing since the age of two. I don't really remember it, because I was little, but my mom signed me up and would put me in cute costumes. A lot of little girls get into dancing, but I loved it so much that I kept doing it.

I began to fear that the Graham work was not in lots of ways sufficient for me. I suppose it came about from looking at other dancing and being involved with the ballet - something about the air and the way she thought about dancing.

Schubert had arguably the same melodic gift as Mozart, but even less support. He didn't have the early exposure, never got to travel anywhere, and yet generated and amassed a body of work that grew and developed and is very profound.

I trained and worked really hard all my life in dance classes. I always fell into the shadows of my mother, and it was hard for me to really realize that I had done the work. Yes, she took me to the best teachers, but I did the work.

There is a strange sort of reasoning in Hollywood that musicals are less worthy of Academy consideration than dramas. It's a form of snobbism, the same sort that perpetuates the idea that drama is more deserving of Awards than comedy.

Virtuous people are simply those who have not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them.

Every time I do a talk show or something, I'll be like, 'I'm doing 'Chandelier,' right?' and they're like, 'No, you're doing a skit and three dances.' It's different every time. I never really know what I'm doing until the day before.

I also had a will that let me eliminate everything that stood in the way of my becoming the best dancer I could be. By a gradual process... (I) had invested every bit of my dreams, my hopes, my energies in defining myself as a dancer.

Doing a musical is not just acting. It's total theater. When you have to justify the enormous projection of energy it takes to just go into song and dance, you realized why it's such a humbling experience every time you go into a show.

It's as if my left heel is my bass drum and my right heel is the floor tom-tom. I can get snare out of my right toe by not putting it down on the floor hard, and, if I want cymbals, I land flat on both feet, full strength on the floor.

Do I watch dancers as people? Yes, absolutely. Do I watch really good dancers for specifically who they are? Absolutely, because how they move best and how they look best is going to be most familiar to them, and not necessarily to me.

My dance teacher will show me pictures of girls who are rhythmic gymnasts, and they are super skinny. But I don't want to be too skinny. I think that looks a little gross when you are dancing. You don't want to be a scrawny, bony thing.

I don't like teaching, because it's so repetitive - especially the beginning of class, which is always more or less the same and has to be carefully done. It's tedious. But I know it's necessary for dancers to keep working on technique.

I see myself helping the next generation of dancers who come along, helping them to keep the dance focused, so we don't get into a position where they're saying in 2050, or whatever, that around 2001 or 2002 or something the dance died.

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