You have to surrender to a book. If you do, when something in it seems to be going askew, you are wounded. The more you have surrendered to a book, the more jarring its errors appear.
Gelsey Kirkland has had more than her share of demons, as her two distressing memoirs - and her violently checkered career - attest.
Has there ever been a dance career with more ups and downs than Twyla Tharp's? Or with more varied ambitions? Or larger ambition?
I don't like writing - it's so difficult to say what you mean. It's much easier to edit other people's writing and help them say what they mean.
In my view, the ebook world for both established and new authors is a terrific new and exciting format. It is a format that will bring forth many new writers to publishing.
Editing requires you to be always open, always responding. It is very important, for example, not to allow yourself to want the writer to write a certain kind of book. Sometimes that's hard.
In traditional 'Swan Lakes,' it's Prince Siegfried's 21st-birthday celebration, his coming-of-age. The entire court, from his mother the Queen on down, is on hand.
You don't have to be a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute to figure out that when you title a memoir of your parents 'Them,' you're performing an act of distancing.
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?
Some countries have more water than others - some can afford to use clean water to flush their poop away, and some can't.
The days of languorous shore leave are long gone. Overnight stays are unheard of and sailor towns a distant memory. In better ports, seafarers head for a seamen's mission.
In 2000, twice as much water was used throughout the world as in 1960. By 2050, half of the planet's projected 8.9 billion people will live in countries that are chronically short of water.
Our parents provided us with the essentials, then got on with their own lives. Which makes me realise that my parents were brilliant, not for what they did, but more for what they didn't do.
There's no wobble in Bush. If anything, the opposite. Right after hello, the next words out of his mouth are: I've never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions.
Clinton's fakery was so deft and deeply ingrained that it was impossible to tell where it ended and the real Bill Clinton began. This constituted a kind of political genius.
In person, George W. Bush is extremely forceful. He has a restless energy when he sits in a chair, and nearly leaps out of it when making certain points.
There is this image of a guy in a hot tub, drinking champagne with two buxom blondes. But that is not the real me. I am a father, and I am a grandfather, too.
If it weren't for Liberace, there would be no Madonna or Lady Gaga, Elton John, Bette Midler, or Elvis because it was Liberace who helped the King glitz up his act.
My colleague Bill Keegan has written a very short book ('Saving the World?') on an unlikely topic - he is the first economist to try to rehabilitate Gordon Brown.
While it is entirely untrue that Canadians lack a sense of humour, the funniest ones tend to head south: Dan Aykroyd, Jim Carrey, Michael J. Fox.
We all have our opinions. But I suspect that writers are actually less worth heeding, because they regard themselves as so uniquely important, so culturally sensitive.
