What counts more than luck is determination and perseverance. If the talent is there, it will come through. Don’t be too impatient. Stick at it. That’s my advice. You have to plug away, keep thinking up new ideas. If one doesn’t work, try another.

The unpadded shoulders, the three-buttoned long and boxy coat, the too-short, thin pants, and the thin ties with striped buttoned shirts in dark colors-well, I suppose this may go very well with some personalities but it’s not for me. To me, all such look like TV producers. Maybe they want to.

I have never had anything that I can remember in the business – and that includes all the movies and the stage shows and everything – that I didn’t enjoy. I didn’t like some of the small-time vaudeville, because we weren’t going on and getting better. Aside from that, I didn’t dislike anything.

I had some ballet training but didn’t like it. It was like a game to me.

I don’t remember anybody ever pointing me out as a dancing prodigy, but I played a not bad second base.

It’s nice that all the composers have said that nobody interprets a lyric like Fred Astaire. But when it comes to selling records I was never worth anything particularly except as a collector’s item.

Oh, there’s no such thing as my favorite performance. I can’t sit here today and look back, and say: “Top Hat was better than Easter Parade or any of the others”. I just don’t look back, period. When I finish with a project, I say: “All right, that’s that. What’s next?”

If the dance is right, there shouldn’t be a single superfluous movement.

This search for what you want is like tracking something that doesn’t want to be tracked. It takes time to get a dance right, to create something memorable.

Be yourself-but don’t be conspicuous.