Category: people

“I felt at some point in my life that that story would need to be told. One of the reasons for writing the memoir is to tell my story the best that I can and as fully as I can. After that, I hope I can get on with writing novels and just talk about them.”

The rocker just won the National Book Award, demonstrating a talent that cuts across specific art forms…

“The funny thing is I think they’re absolutely easy to understand. My books are about the real world, I’m not writing escapist fantasies. Listen,, what I strive for is lucidity in every sentence.”

From the aptly-named feature “Awkward Question Time”: Q: “You’ve done love scenes in movies before. How does [her playful animal reproduction series] Seduce Me compare? Is it more awkward when your partner is one-dimensional?” A: “Well, you know, I wrote the scripts. I designed the basic solution of the cardboard mates. It was meant to be funny. I don’t need to go to the Actor’s Studio to play it.” (It gets worse.)

“He was known for his cancellations, as even the pope discovered. Kronos waited 12 years for a piece that was so personal he couldn’t let it out of his sight until the right moment mysteriously arrived. And I always loved him more for that devotion to his muse.”

“The White House announced Wednesday that President Obama will bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the country’s highest civilian honor – on 15 individuals, including artist Jasper Johns and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.”

“[Her] Floor-Barre begins with students stretched on the floor and proceeds with gentle exercises … without the pressure of gravity or the tendency toward rigidity that sometimes accompanies traditional standing-barre exercises.” Among her many notable students were Tommy Tune, Melissa Hayden, Patrick Swayze, Lar Lubovitch and Judith Jamison.

“Politics is like acid here. No matter how many protective coatings you put on yourself, it eats through them.”

We know him as the father of American landscape architecture and the designer of North America’s first great urban parks. But Olmsted was the Union Army’s chief sanitation officer for two years during the Civil War, and the experience influenced his entire career.

“At the Harkness Ballet, where she and [Lawrence] Rhodes were founding members from 1964 to 1970, Ms. Isaksen could seemingly do no wrong and was acclaimed by critics and the public alike. Small and elegant, she transformed her deceptive fragility into a startling flexibility that flowed into the convoluted shapes created for her by an array of modern choreographers.”