Top 35 Swan Quotes

I’ve developed into quite a swan. I’m one of those people that will probably look better and better as I get older until I drop dead of beauty.

If troubled companies want to explain away 2008 as a ‘black swan,’ then someone should take responsibility for creating the oil slick that seems to have tarred the entire flock!

The key to building long muscle as you swim is stretching arms far ahead of you in the water, sort of like a swan.

Technical things are getting more mechanical. Take ‘Swan Lake,’ the Black Swan pas de deux. Now, my goodness, they’re turning not just 32 fouettes – but double or triple pirouettes.

I think it requires a bit of honesty, Swan Lake.

Having done so many versions, I never felt like an artist in ‘Swan Lake.’

It was my idea to do a two-hour course of barista training. I was keen to learn how to finish off my coffee with a picture of a heart or a palm tree or, perhaps, a swan.

There are no makeovers in my books. The ugly duckling does not become a beautiful swan. She becomes a confident duck able to take charge of her own life and problems.

I guess because I came to it later in life, I realized, ‘Oh, going to a fashion show is like going to the opening of Degas at the Met or going to see Swan Lake.’

I’m going to do ‘The Social Network Two: The Electric Boogaloo.’ And I have a part in ‘Beige Swan.’ I’m going to be the lead, but I don’t dance. I just do a lot of sitting down. It’s too tiring to get up and dance around. That should be coming out in 20-never.

I’m particularly interested in black swan events: unprecedented surprises that destroy the conventional wisdom about how the world works.

Last year, when ‘Black Swan,’ ‘True Grit’ and ‘King’s Speech’ all grossed over $100 million, it gave studios and independent financiers the confidence to make daring movies and not do the same old you-know-what.

Blood is the leitmotif of ‘Black Swan.’

You cannot dance an arabesque in ‘Swan Lake’ and ‘Nutcracker’ the same way.

To this day, people are still talking about the Coral Casino’s parties of the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s – complete with antidotes of Errol Flynn’s swan dives, Marlon Brando’s secret cigar smoking spots, and Ester Williams’ Aquacades.

In the heyday of the Oscars, there were electric sparks flying. When Cher went in her fabulous Bob Mackie dress and her Mohawk, and Bjoerk with her swan dress. Then we thought it was bad taste; now I think it should have been the best dress because she stood out.

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.

Slashing its way to the finish line, ‘Black Swan’ is the first ballet movie for highbrow horror fans for whom ballet itself signifies little to nothing. Those of us who know and love ballet can only look on it with a different kind of horror.

We were the best team in the world: European champions in 1984, we qualified without a hitch and 86 was to be the swan song for a very experienced side.

Jim Swan was my father, but Reg Barnes was my dad.

Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan’s egg.

I hated Matthew Bourne’s ‘Swan Lake’ when it first turned up, and then when it was televised, and then when it returned.

‘Black Swan’ was absolutely unbelievable. I had always dreamed of working with Darren Aronofsky, and Natalie Portman, Winona Ryder, Barbara Hershey, Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel. The entire cast was really a dream cast, and it was amazing to work with these powerhouse women that I’ve just admired for so many years.

‘Black Swan’ does what Hollywood movies have always done – it spends its energies on getting some surface things right while getting everything important wrong. Darren Aronofsky, the director, applies the same techniques and the same sensibility here as he did with ‘The Wrestler,’ only with a prettier protagonist.

When I saw the movie ‘Black Swan,’ I liked the darker aspect of it, the more dramatics, and that’s what I like to do for my programs.

When I went to Moscow, I felt I was relearning Swan Lake – which was written for the Bolshoi – and being immersed in a tradition and history I had never experienced. It took a while to adjust to living there and learning the language, but now I have lots of friends. I get the best of two completely different worlds.

I would love for ‘God of War II’ to be considered the swan song of the PS2 but I really don’t think this will be the last great game on the system.

‘Swan,’ by Mary Oliver. Poems and prose. Reading from this book is as if visiting a very wise friend. There is wisdom and welcoming kindness on every page.

What ‘War and Peace’ is to the novel and ‘Hamlet’ is to the theater, Swan Lake’ is to ballet – that is, the name which to many people stands for and sums up an art form.

The first time the Kirov ballet was seen in America was on Sept. 11, 1961. The ballet was ‘Swan Lake.’ The ballerina was Inna Zubkovskaya. The place was the old Met, on what must have been one of the hottest nights of the year, and there was no air-conditioning.

‘Don’t Look Back’ is my first YA contemporary mystery/thriller. It’s been described as ‘Black Swan’ meets ‘Pretty Little Liars’.

What I find funny are peoples’ blind spots. That’s the funniest thing about anybody – when they just don’t realize who they are. What’s funny about seeing a hippo do ballet is it thinks it’s a swan.

I think that all services will have downtime. No matter how much you prepare, have redundant systems, or audit, there will periodically be a black swan event that is completely unlike whatever you’ve experienced before. It even happens to Google!

I had daydreamed through many performances of Swan Lake, thinking the dancing tutus only ever conveyed one aspect of swans: their beauty gliding on water. I wondered what it would be like to use male dancers and bring out swans’ aggressive, muscular side.

I had the opportunity to train with Natalie Portman for ‘Black Swan,’ and the program we created was intense and involved a lot of travel.