Time & Perspective Quote by Suzanne Farrell

A tiny confession, delivered with the plainspoken clarity of someone whose life has been organized by rehearsal schedules rather than literary salons. Suzanne Farrell’s line lands because it sketches an entire worldview in one practical shrug: the desire for inner life bumping up against the brutal arithmetic of a dancer’s day.

The phrasing matters. “I liked to read” is gentle, almost wistful, suggesting curiosity and a private appetite for stories, ideas, maybe a self that exists offstage. Then comes the hinge: “but, being a dancer…” As if “dancer” isn’t just a job but a total identity, one that automatically explains the scarcity of time. The subtext is that dance isn’t merely time-consuming; it’s consuming, period. It claims the body, the hours, the recovery, the mental bandwidth. Reading becomes a luxury item.

There’s also a quiet pushback against a familiar cultural hierarchy. Ballet is often treated as elite art, yet the labor behind it gets romanticized into effortless grace. Farrell punctures that myth without complaining. No melodrama, no martyrdom: just the matter-of-fact reality that discipline has opportunity costs. The quote carries the context of a generation of dancers trained in a system where devotion was measured in total availability, and where the “serious” artist was expected to choose the studio over everything else.

What makes it work is its restraint. Farrell doesn’t posture as anti-intellectual; she admits the pull of books. She simply lets the schedule win. That’s the poignancy: a life of expression that leaves limited room for other forms of nourishment.