Robert Gottlieb Quotes

Author Image

Robert Gottlieb

Profession : Writer

Birth : April 29, 1931

City Ballet has to develop choreographers of stature and a new approach to coaching before everything we value about it fades away and, in the great tradition of the Cheshire Cat, there's nothing left but Peter Martins' smile.

Robert Gottlieb

Schumann's 'Quintet in E flat for Piano and Strings' is one of the sublime moments in Romantic music.

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

At a certain point, you have to face the fact that you've turned into an old fart.

Robert Gottlieb

Editing is simply the application of the common sense of any good reader. That's why, to be an editor, you have to be a reader. It's the number one qualification.

Robert Gottlieb

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

Robert Gottlieb

The man Dickens, whom the world at large thought it knew, stood for all the Victorian virtues - probity, kindness, hard work, sympathy for the down-trodden, the sanctity of domestic life - even as his novels exposed the violence, hypocrisy, greed, and cruelty of the Victorian age.

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

Melissa Barak, an ex-City Ballet dancer and sometime choreographer, has put together an unspeakably dopey and incompetent mess called 'Call Me Ben,' combining ultra-generic dance, terrible dialogue and disastrous storytelling, about the founding of Las Vegas by the gangster Bugsy Siegel, who insists, violently, on being addressed as 'Ben.'

Robert Gottlieb

Every great dance company, even when it seems poised in perfect balance, needs constant renewal of both repertory and performers.

Robert 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

Despite the rigid classicism of the famous Paris Opera school and company, the French have done more than their share to unmoor la Danse from its traditions and standards.

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

Larry Hart and Dick Rodgers were both bright Jewish boys from Manhattan who at one point or another went to Columbia, but there the similarity in their backgrounds ends.

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

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.

Robert Gottlieb

In 1998, Vanity Fair asked me to write a big piece for them on the 50th anniversary of the New York City Ballet. My life, to a great extent, had been spent at and with the New York City Ballet, and I decided to try it. It was very scary, writing about something I loved so much and had such strong opinions about.

Robert Gottlieb

Like all editors, I assume, I'm a reactor.

Robert Gottlieb

Ballet is like any other art form in that we all start out knowing nothing about it.

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