Maksim Chmerkovskiy

I spent my entire childhood with my father. I started my first business at 16, and we became business partners. He's not just a mentor and somebody that I look up to, but he's also someone whom I took work ethic and determination and all of those qualities from.

My grandma and my mom are not happy about the fact that I am still a bachelor. It's not on my mind that I have to find the person I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. It will happen the way it's going to happen.

The thrill of a photo-realist painter is if you get really close to the painting, it looks just like a photograph. Whereas in my case, if you get close to my paintings, they totally fall apart - so I'm about as far from a photo-realist as it gets.

This celebration here tells me that this work is not hopeless. I thank you for this teaching with all my heart and lift my glass to human solidarity, to the ultimate victory of knowledge, peace, good-will and understanding.