Gottlieb Quotes & Sayings

Nobody could call the work of Noche Flamenca & Soledad Barrio pallid. — Robert Gottlieb

It was in the attempt to ascertain the interrelationships between species that experiments n genetics were first made. The words "evolution" and "origin of species" are now so intimately associated with the name of Darwin that we are apt to forger that the idea of common descent had been prominent in the mnds of naturalists before he wrote, and that, for more than half a century, zealous investigators had been devoting themselves to the experimental study of that possibility. Prominent among this group of experimenters may be mentioned Koelreauter, John Hunter, Herbert Knight, Gartner, Jordan. Naudin, Godron, Lecoq, Wichura
men whose names are familiar to every reader of Animals and Plants unders Domestication. — William Bateson

Almost the first thing you see after entering the Houdini exhibition at the Jewish Museum is a large-screen film of Harry Houdini hanging by his ankles upside-down from a tall building, high over a sea of men in fedoras, and thrashing his way out of a straitjacket. — Robert Gottlieb

Paris, as always, is swarming with Americans, and these days, it's also swarming with hamburgers. Oddly, though, it's not typically the Americans who are pursuing the perfect burger on the perfect bun with the obligatory side of perfect coleslaw; the Americans are pursuing the perfect blanquette de veau. — Robert Gottlieb

The heart of the classical repertory is the Tchaikovsky-Petipa 'Sleeping Beauty,' and no ballet is harder to get right. — Robert Gottlieb

When I work, I'm thinking in terms of purely visual effects and relations, and any verbal equivalent is something that comes afterwards. But it's inconceivable to me that I could experience things and not have them enter into my painting. — Adolph Gottlieb

Dating is about grand romantic gestures that mean little over the long term. Marriage is about small acts of kindness that bond you over a lifetime. — Lori Gottlieb

The Iron Curtain may be a thing of the past, but Mother Russia is as mysterious as ever. — Robert Gottlieb

We do not act because we know, but we know because we are destined for action; practical reason is the root of all reason. — Johann Gottlieb Fichte

What really matters is that 'Black Swan' deploys and exaggerates all the cliches of earlier ballet movies, especially 'The Red Shoes,' another tale of a ballerina driven mad and suicidal. — Robert Gottlieb

Shakespeare has always been up for grabs, and choreographers have every right to use him any way they choose. — Robert Gottlieb

Ballet companies have their ups and downs, just like the rest of us. — Robert Gottlieb

A man can do what he ought to do; and when he says he cannot, it is because he will not. — Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Like Pi, we all have tigers within us. Lil demons which are a part of us. If you can't run away from them, welcome them, feed them and listen to what they will have to say. There is really not a whole lot to be afraid of. — Daniel Gottlieb

Here below is not the land of happiness: I know it now; it is only the land of toil, and every joy which comes to us is only to strengthen us for some greater labor that is to succeed. — Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also. — Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Only through blind Instinct, in which the only possible guidance of the Imperative is awanting, does the Power in Intuition remain undetermined; where it is schematised as absolute it becomes infinite; and where it is presented in a determinate form, as a principle, it becomes at least manifold. By the above-mentioned act of Intelligising, the Power liberates itself from Instinct, to direct itself towards Unity. — Johann Gottlieb Fichte

The mind that leaps is the mind that lives. — Daniel Gottlieb

that which doesn't kill you, almost kills you — Michael Gottlieb

The most reckless sinner against his own conscience has always in the background the consolation that he will go on in this course only this time, or only so long, but that at such a time he will amend. We may be assured that we do not stand clear with our own consciences so long as we determine or project, or even hold it possible, at some future time to alter our course of action. — Johann Gottlieb Fichte

When I look at my friend's marriages, with their routine day-to-dayness, they actually seem far more romantic than any dating relationship might be. Dating seems romantic, but for the most part it's an extended audition. Marriage seems boring, but for the most part it's a state of comfort and acceptance. Dating is about grand romantic gestures that mean little over the long-term. Marriage is about small acts of kindness that bond you over a lifetime. It's quietly romantic. He makes her tea. She goes to the doctor appointment with him. They listen to each other's daily trivia. They put up with each other's quirks. They're there for each other. — Lori Gottlieb

The finest chroniclers of the great and the near-great have often been courtiers - the Duc de Saint-Simon, for instance, or Lady Murasaki. — Robert Gottlieb

If you like being battered, the work of Savion Glover - one-time child prodigy - should be up your alley. I don't, and it isn't up mine. — Robert Gottlieb

The world is much bigger than you thought — Daniel Gottlieb

God told Abraham to leave his home and set for journey and to have faith of being taken care of. Not just an external journey, it was also a journey upon into oneself. — Daniel Gottlieb

I can almost always read a new manuscript overnight. — Robert Gottlieb

'Empty Moves' is elegantly and coolly inventive. Two pairs of dancers shadow each other in slow, deliberate rearrangements and manipulations of legs and torsos, only occasionally switching partners or breaking free of the formal patterning. — Robert Gottlieb

There is nothing wrong if you are different. But FEELING different is. — Daniel Gottlieb

Ballet Hispanico is a mixture of ethnic, ballet, social, jazz - you name it, it's doing it. The company has been going strong for more than 20 years, and you can see why: It may not be refined, but it's full of beans. — Robert Gottlieb

In Georgia, apparently, men are men and women are women - at least in their folk dance. — Robert Gottlieb

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

With its vastly complicated plot and its immense cast of characters swirling around the case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce that has been grinding away in the Court of Chancery for decades, 'Bleak House' is, for many readers, Dickens's greatest novel. — Robert Gottlieb

As the waters of life wash over us, we lose our sharp corners, and that can be good or bad...trust your instincts, remember your 'secret pacts' and reclaim the wisdom you have always had — Daniel Gottlieb

'Eclipse' is a concept piece, and its concept centers on 36 large light bulbs strung from above in a geometrical pattern and at different heights, some of them at times down below the dancers' chest level. — Robert Gottlieb

You can take this mouth this wound you want but you can't kiss and make it better. — Daphne Gottlieb

Gelsey Kirkland has had more than her share of demons, as her two distressing memoirs - and her violently checkered career - attest. — Robert Gottlieb

More often than not, it's disrespectful to them (our children) - and disrespectful to their struggle with their tasks in life- if our own anxiety as parents makes us cling to our children. It's disrespectful is we demand more intimacy than they are willing or able to give. Too much involvement with our children is not an act of love- it's an act of selfishness. — Daniel Gottlieb

The best or nothing at all. — Gottlieb Daimler

The eternal and uneasy relationship between ballet and modern dance endures, but radically altered in tone and intensity. — Robert Gottlieb

'Porgy and Bess' has never been thought of as a dance show, and yet it's filled with dance. It uses dance to punctuate the action, or as background, or as atmosphere; even when it's front and center, it isn't crucial. — Robert Gottlieb

No agent/publisher is in a position to create across a spectrum of media and distribution what major publishers can accomplish for authors. — Robert Gottlieb

There are certain historical figures of such importance that we need to know everything about them, which is why books about Napoleon, Lincoln, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I, and the great religious founders continue to proliferate; these lives require constant reevaluation and interpretation. — Robert Gottlieb

Young women today, as in the fifties, find themselves entering the big world and having to make choices. — Robert Gottlieb

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. — Robert Gottlieb

I write to make sense of things that don't make sense to me. — Daphne Gottlieb

That's what happens in our hearts. The holes do not disappear, but scar tissue grows and becomes part of who we are. The same takes place in nature. As the famous Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi observed, 'There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature.' The most stable structures in nature - like trees or spiderwebs - have angular and curved lines. As our hearts grow larger, and we learn that scar tissue is not so ugly after all, we accommodate what we had thought would be unendurable. And we realize that the wisdom we have gained would not have been possible without the losses we have known, even those that seemed impossible to bear. — Daniel Gottlieb

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. — Robert Gottlieb

The truth is, if we become comfortable with who we are rather than who we think we should be, then we will be less insecure. — Daniel Gottlieb

I think that hope is the act of continuing in the face of the truth. — Daphne Gottlieb

In today's world, it never looks good when you're suing somebody who earned $20,000 for writing a book over a period of a year or two. — Robert Gottlieb

The Restless Anthropologist is a rich, powerful, and compulsively readable collection of essays by anthropologists who look back at the multiple relationships between their serial fieldwork experiences and their lives. Illustrating the dense interweaving of the personal and the professional that is the hallmark of anthropology as a vocation, these essays are at once affectively deep reflections, and clear-eyed assessments, of lives often lived 'between here and there.' Alma Gottlieb's idea to stimulate these articles and bring together this collection was inspired. — Sherry Ortner

The love between people and especially between mothers and children doesn't end. It flows like a river through the world. Shut your eyes and you can feel it rising. — Eli Gottlieb

When December comes, can 'The Nutcracker' be far behind? No, it can't - not in America, anyway. — Robert Gottlieb

As our children turn even five or six degrees away from us, we have to be aware of our fear and our excitement and our hope for them. And as that five or sex degrees turns into ten or twenty degrees, even ninety degrees, we have to monitor those feelings every step of the way-and ultimately realize that our child is another human being and not necessarily and extension of us. — Daniel Gottlieb

I can't claim to 'understand' 'Byzantium,' if any dance work can be 'understood,' but whenever I see it, I sense that it's charged with meaning. — Robert Gottlieb

It's a funny thing about life, I think we're born square and we die round — Daniel Gottlieb

This Being out of God cannot, by any means, be a limited, completed, and inert Being, since God himself is not such a dead Being, but, on the contrary, is Life; but it can only be a Power, since only a Power is the true formal picture or Schema of Life. And indeed it can only be the Power of realising that which is contained in itself a Schema. — Johann Gottlieb Fichte

The 1920s brought not only the Charleston but the flat chest. — Robert Gottlieb

Who would have thought that a tap-dancing penguin would outpoint James Bond at the box office? And deserve to? Not that there's anything wrong with 'Casino Royale.' But 'Happy Feet' - written and directed by George Miller - is a complete charmer, even if, in the way of most family fare, it can't resist straying into the Inspirational. — Robert Gottlieb

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. — Robert Gottlieb

Writing happened to me. I didn't decide to start writing or to be a writer. I never wanted to be a writer. — Robert Gottlieb

Martha Graham, along with George Balanchine, is one of the two commanding figures in 20th-century American dance. For those much younger than I am, her genius as a performer will have to be taken on faith - and on the always-suspect evidence of film. What will last, if things go well, is her genius as a choreographer, as a woman of the theater. — Robert Gottlieb

I first read 'An American Tragedy' in college, and in my entire life I had never read anything so painful. — Robert Gottlieb

Like all editors, I assume, I'm a reactor. — Robert Gottlieb

Remember: TV is a format, film is a format, and books are a format. — Robert Gottlieb

Next time you're about to rule out some guy because he's not your ideal, try to focus on the good things about him, because some guy is going to have to focus on the good things about you, even though he may have wanted someone more easygoing or taller. Every time you start to dissect some guy, note that he's willfully ignoring all of this in order to go out with you. — Lori Gottlieb

'Seven Sonatas,' with its flowing series of meetings between men and women in an identifiable emotional world, is in the mould of Jerome Robbins' glorious 'Dances at a Gathering.' — Robert Gottlieb

There is nothing going on. I took nothing you wanted. You can't have it back. — Daphne Gottlieb

I have no problem selling ebooks for authors directly as an agent, but partnering with them is another matter. — Robert Gottlieb

Not alone to know, but to act according to thy knowledge, is thy destination,
proclaims the voice of my inmost soul. Not for indolent contemplation and study of thyself, nor for brooding over emotions of piety,
no, for action was existence given thee; thy actions, and thy actions alone, determine thy worth. — Johann Gottlieb Fichte

I never use nature as a starting point. I never abstract from nature; I never consciously think of nature when I paint. — Adolph Gottlieb

Humanity may endure the loss of everything; all its possessions may be turned away without infringing its true dignity - all but the possibility of improvement. — Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Once, Pina Bausch was about something, however disagreeable. — Robert Gottlieb

There are a few writers whose lives and personalities are so large, so fascinating, that there's no such thing as a boring biography of them - you can read every new one that comes along, good or bad, and be caught up in the story all over again. — Robert Gottlieb

One day you will die, but death is not your enemy and it only makes you to appreciate life's gifts more with each passing second. — Daniel Gottlieb

Diana Vishneva is not only a magnificent dancer but a magnificent actress - no one works harder or understands more. — Robert Gottlieb

I can't remember how many years it's been since I last saw a David Parsons program or what I saw whenever it was, but that isn't surprising, since I can't really remember the first half of a David Parsons program while I'm watching the second half. — Robert Gottlieb

For Russians, to whom Pushkin's poem 'Eugene Onegin' is sacred text, the ballet's story and personae are as familiar and filled with meaning as, for instance, 'Romeo' and 'Hamlet' are for us. Russians know whole stretches of it by heart, the way we know Shakespeare and Italians know Dante. — Robert Gottlieb

The best seat in the house often depends on the ballet. For instance, much of the first act of 'The Nutcracker' is domestic and small scale, so it's great to sit up close. But the second act features elaborate scenery and choreography, which are better to observe from a distance. — Robert Gottlieb

Of the great singing stars of the 1940s and '50s, only one - Nat King Cole - died young, at age 45. — Robert Gottlieb

Sometimes situations call for us to act strong and brave even when we don't feel that way, but the payoff is better if we don't pretend when we feel weak or scared so that we allow people to show the kindness that's in them — Daniel Gottlieb

Giving to others is most precious when it is done quietly and selflessly.
Righteous indignation is like candy when you're starving. It feels good, but it doesn't sustain you very long. — Daniel Gottlieb

Wayne McGregor's 'Dyad 1929' is a good example of this capable British choreographer's work. — Robert Gottlieb

There's no point pretending that all of Martha Graham's pieces are equally strong. — Robert Gottlieb

Like all buses, it comes when it comes. You can wait with frustations, angers or feeling of victimhoods or you can wait with patience and relaxation, either way, it won't make the bus come any way faster — Daniel Gottlieb

Tolstoy may be right about happy and unhappy families, but in ballet, it works the opposite way: All good ballets are different from each other and all bad ones are alike, at least in one crucial respect - they're all empty. — Robert Gottlieb

Yes, bad or mediocre ballets can be useful to the dancers and temporarily fun for the audience, but in the long run, the lowering of standards can only erode the art form we all love. — Robert Gottlieb

'The Leaves Are Fading' had something of a vogue when Antony Tudor made it in 1975, largely because of Gelsey Kirkland's ravishing performance. — Robert Gottlieb

What sort of philosophy one chooses depends on what sort of person one is. — Johann Gottlieb Fichte

How many more tragedies does it take before we do something? How many more children have to die before this country realizes that No Gun Zones create perfect locations for violence? You can not stop criminals and mad men with laws, you can only stop violence with the fear of armed victims. — Alan Gottlieb

Soledad Barrio is clearly a master - of thrilling steps and passionate movement. She stalks, she circles, she struts, she snaps her head - her feet drill the stage. — Robert Gottlieb

We are all connected in the unending chain of belief and doubt. Together we can answer each other's questions. — Amy Gottlieb

'Paquita' has a patchy history, beginning in 1846, and a patchy plot. — Robert Gottlieb

A Buddhist teacher once said that a poisonous snake is only poisonous when you walk toward it. — Daniel Gottlieb

When stars are in the quiet skies, Then most I pine for thee; Bend on me, then, thy tender eyes, As stars look on the sea. — Ernst Gottlieb Baron

Nothing is more destructive of individual character than for a man to lose all faith in his own abilities for the prosecution of his work. — Johann Gottlieb Fichte

It's often the case that the most strained moments in books are the very beginning and the very end - the getting in and the getting out. The ending, especially: it's awkward, as if the writer doesn't know when the book is over and nervously says it all again. — Robert Gottlieb

The living and efficaciously acting moral order is itself God. We require no other God, nor can we grasp any other. — Johann Gottlieb Fichte

We see a new generation of Russian authors who are not divided from their Western contemporaries either culturally or philosophically. — Robert Gottlieb

Blood is the leitmotif of 'Black Swan.' — Robert Gottlieb