As much as I love my work, I do appreciate my rare days off. Even then, I can't afford to let the dancing go. I need at least an hour just to keep in shape, so wherever I am in the world, I'll grab the door or the furniture and do some serious exercise.
I do not want an animal to die for me.
When you start, you have no brain; you are a kid. It's fine. But then I started to be scared. I was scared of judgment - not as a dancer, but as a person - and I was really uncomfortable with people. And it lasted for a very long time.
People thought I had no feelings, that I was hard. But really, I was extremely sensitive to everything.
Most producers who want you to dance are not looking at the long term. They see their evenings, the box office, whom they have to repay, whatever.
While I enjoy it, I will continue to go onstage. While I contribute something, fine. I don't want to be dragging my feet. I don't want to become pathetic, but I think I will be lucid enough. I'll know when to stop.
I judge myself severely.
I am not nice. That has gotten me into a lot of trouble.
I had no sense of having reached some goal because I was an etoile at the Paris Opera. My ambition, if you can call it that, was to discover and learn and be excited by what I was doing. If I didn't have that, I would find it elsewhere.
There's a picture of me as a little girl, and I'm waiting to go onstage, and I am biting the last bit of nail I have left on my finger.
I think it's going to be the most difficult thing to do, to leave the stage. But if you have no lucidity about it, it's even worse because you don't see the negative side of you still being onstage.
The Palais Garnier was part of my childhood, my pseudo-adolescence, my life.
The problems I had with the Paris Opera Ballet are a thing of the past.
At the Paris Opera Ballet, they were always making choices for me.
There is a false idea that I am stubborn and do only what I want, but really, I am like a sponge.
There are some ballets you can do for a long time. With others, you have to know when to stop. Some are very destructive. Forsythe's choreography pushes dancers to the extreme. That's why it's best to vary. That way, you break your body a little bit in different places, but not a lot in one place.
It is in my nature to be a little shy. It takes time for me to talk to people and trust them.
I can't have friends in every port. I have to work very hard and be very clear about what I want to do. I cannot just swallow everything I am told. I have to decide what I want to become part of my luggage - and what I don't.
Some choreographers have been cautious about working with me.
I'm not the kind of person who is on television and in magazines every five minutes selling clothes or washing machines.
