Robert Gottlieb

“'River of Light,' to a dense but powerful score commissioned from Charles Wuorinen and with ravishing lighting by Mark Stanley, has depth and resonance.”

“The mysteries and scandals of the Kremlin are nothing compared to the mysteries and scandals of the Bolshoi.”

“I can almost always read a new manuscript overnight.”

“After all these years of saying the same thing about the Alvin Ailey company - terrific dancers, awful repertory - I'm finally accepting the inevitable: I'm not going to change my mind, and they're not going to change their ways. And why should they, given their juggernaut success all over the world?”

“When you can't follow a ballet's action, you can always read the program notes.”

“The cows in Stella Gibbons's immortal 'Cold Comfort Farm' are named Graceless, Aimless, Feckless and Pointless, and that more or less is the verdict on 'Ocean's Kingdom,' the wildly hyped and wildly uninteresting collaboration between Peter Martins and Paul McCartney.”

“Remember: TV is a format, film is a format, and books are a format.”

“Why movie and dance critics are taking 'The Company' seriously, I can't imagine. Are they impressed by Altman's reputation and naive sincerity? By the fluid semi-documentary approach?”

“Most famous stage actors tactfully fade away.”

“It's a crapshoot, publishing.”

“Charles Dickens left us fifteen novels, and in an ideal world, everyone would read all of them.”

“'The Sleeping Beauty' is the greatest, most challenging and most vulnerable of classical ballets. Everything can go wrong with it, and all too often, everything does.”

“Paul Taylor's 'Offenbach Overtures' has lots of zip and charm, and its pair of dueling soldiers in red, who end up starry-eyed about each other while their disgusted seconds take up the quarrel, is nonstop funny.”

“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.”

“Most writers are vulnerable and insecure, and Kay Graham was more so than most.”

“What guarantees - or at least semi-guarantees - good ballets is good choreographers, and they are thin on the ground.”

“'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is one of George Balanchine's greatest creations - and one of the greatest of all story ballets.”

“We all need each other in publishing to make publishing work for authors in a variety of formats now and in the future. Anyone who thinks publishers don't bring anything to the table has a very narrow view and lack of knowledge about the industry as a whole.”

“City Ballet remains a great company in perpetual artistic crisis.”

“Like all editors, I assume, I'm a reactor.”