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

Inspirational Family Yin

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

Pet Car Art

Controversy sells books.

Robert Gottlieb

T Sells Sell

It's always fascinating - and sometimes a little disquieting - when two first-rate critics violently disagree.

Robert Gottlieb

Time Ways Way

'Beloved Renegade' is a meditation on Walt Whitman, on tenderness, on dying.

Robert Gottlieb

Love Yin Walt

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

Inspirational Family Yin

When December comes, can 'The Nutcracker' be far behind? No, it can't - not in America, anyway.

Robert Gottlieb

Way T Nut

'Eclipse' is overlong and overly self-conscious, but it isn't a fake or a zero; it just gets exhausting. It raises a crucial question: 'When does Concept morph into Gimmick?'

Robert Gottlieb

Zero Us Tin

I have no problem selling ebooks for authors directly as an agent, but partnering with them is another matter.

Robert Gottlieb

Art Age Wit

In my view, the ebook world for both established and new authors is a terrific new and exciting format. It is a format that will bring forth many new writers to publishing.

Robert Gottlieb

Writers Writer Write

You can approach 'The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death' in a variety or combination of ways: as a startlingly eccentric hobby; as a series of unresolved murder mysteries; as the manifestation of one woman's peculiar psychic life; as a lesson in forensics; as a metaphor for the fate of women; as a photographic study.

Robert Gottlieb

Women Men Life

You may feel that Peter Martins' 'Beauty' is too compressed and inexpressive, but it's loyal to the text.

Robert Gottlieb

Pet Art You

'River of Light,' to a dense but powerful score commissioned from Charles Wuorinen and with ravishing lighting by Mark Stanley, has depth and resonance.

Robert Gottlieb

Power Wit Tin

Blood is the leitmotif of 'Black Swan.'

Robert Gottlieb

T Swan Lack

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.

Robert Gottlieb

War Peace Art

Ballet in September used to be dead as a dodo. Now, with City Ballet's ingenious decision to give us four weeks of repertory in the early fall, having cut down on the relentlessly long spring season when dancers, critics and audiences droop on the vine, we wake up after the dog days of August with something to look at.

Robert Gottlieb

Wit Weeks Week

Either 'Deuce Coupe' has aged badly, or I have. I suspect it's the latter.

Robert Gottlieb

Age Us Up

Jodi Melnick is hotly self-absorbed. Her onstage musicians are much too loud, and like so many narcissistic performers, she goes on much too long: She's interested in herself; why wouldn't we be?

Robert Gottlieb

Music Age Would

Without a Prospero-Caliban relationship to balance the Prospero-Ariel one, 'The Tempest' loses much of its resonance.

Robert Gottlieb

Relationship Without Wit

Most famous stage actors tactfully fade away.

Robert Gottlieb

Famous Age Way

We know that Diana Vishneva is a phenomenon of strength and style, and she certainly has earned the right to stretch her talents as best she can.

Robert Gottlieb

Strength Men Talents

It's a crapshoot, publishing.

Robert Gottlieb

'Ocean's Kingdom' is a fairy story with no subtext, no resonance - it's not about anything except its water-logged plot.

Robert Gottlieb

You have to surrender to a book. If you do, when something in it seems to be going askew, you are wounded. The more you have surrendered to a book, the more jarring its errors appear.

Robert Gottlieb

As an editor, I have to be tactful, of course.

Robert Gottlieb

Diana Vishneva is not only a magnificent dancer but a magnificent actress - no one works harder or understands more.

Robert Gottlieb

One of the eternal mysteries of ballet is how untalented choreographers find backers for their work, and then find good dancers to perform in it. Is it irresistible charm? Chutzpah? Pure determination? Blackmail? Or are so many supposedly knowledgeable people just plain blind?

Robert Gottlieb

The first movement ballerina should be a paradigm of strength and authority.

Robert Gottlieb

As ye sow, so shall ye reap. When a ballet company spends a lot of money on gimmicky pieces, it's stuck with them for a while - they have to earn their keep.

Robert Gottlieb

What makes a publishing house great? The easy answer is the consistency with which it produces books of value over a lengthy period of time.

Robert Gottlieb

Dickens was born in 1812 and died in 1870, having produced fifteen novels, many of which can confidently be called great, as well as having accomplished outstanding work in activities into which his insatiable need to expend his vast energies - to achieve, to prevail - carried him: journalism, editing, acting, social reform.

Robert Gottlieb

There is no consolation for anyone in the Scott Peterson story, and no final illumination.

Robert Gottlieb

Charles Dickens left us fifteen novels, and in an ideal world, everyone would read all of them.

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

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

Robert Gottlieb

We all need each other in publishing to make publishing work for authors in a variety of formats now and in the future. Anyone who thinks publishers don't bring anything to the table has a very narrow view and lack of knowledge about the industry as a whole.

Robert Gottlieb

No agent/publisher is in a position to create across a spectrum of media and distribution what major publishers can accomplish for authors.

Robert Gottlieb

The mystery of Christopher Wheeldon deepens. Yes, he's the most talented of the younger ballet choreographers - indeed, where's the competition? Yes, he's particularly good at nurturing dancers and identifying their essential qualities.

Robert Gottlieb

Shakespeare has always been up for grabs, and choreographers have every right to use him any way they choose.

Robert Gottlieb

With literary fiction, generally a film maker falls in love with a book. In commercial fiction, it's a producer or studio falling in love with a book they can make into a movie with worldwide appeal.

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

Dance stories, unlike those in opera, are usually simple.

Robert Gottlieb

If Tom Clancy didn't write any Op-Centers, he would be $60 million less rich.

Robert Gottlieb

Remember: TV is a format, film is a format, and books are a format.

Robert Gottlieb

We see a new generation of Russian authors who are not divided from their Western contemporaries either culturally or philosophically.

Robert Gottlieb

You don't have to be a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute to figure out that when you title a memoir of your parents 'Them,' you're performing an act of distancing.

Robert Gottlieb