Sylvie Guillem

I'm not the kind of person who is on television and in magazines every five minutes selling clothes or washing machines.

If I am out in the street or buying bread or taking a taxi, no one knows who I am.

I am only interested in being famous for my dancing. For me, the concept of the sacred monster is only about the stage - it is not about image.

I was afraid when I came to the Royal Ballet that it would be easy to have everyone walking all over me if I didn't stick up for myself.

Some choreographers have been cautious about working with me.

A performance is like a boat. You really want it to arrive at port. So when something goes wrong and it doesn't get there, that touches me a lot.

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.

At the Paris Opera Ballet, they were always making choices for me.

The problems I had with the Paris Opera Ballet are a thing of the past.

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.

Between what I know I can do and want to achieve and what the audience expects, it's a lot of pressure, and it's always adding up.

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 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.

I am not nice. That has gotten me into a lot of trouble.

I judge myself severely.

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.

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.

One has to learn to say, 'Wait, there is a pain that is not logical. I will do a scan, and if there is something serious, I will stop immediately.' If the body sends a message, you have to listen to it.

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.

I do not want an animal to die for me.