“I use the words gods and goddesses principally, I think, to mean beautiful bodies – bodies that are absolute instruments. And I believe in discipline, I believe in a very definite technique.”

Misery is a communicable disease.

Repetition not for monotony but the ecstasy it induces.

It’s not my job to look beautiful. It’s my job to look interesting.

It’s what I always wanted to do, to show the laughter, the fun, the joy of dance.

Dance is communication, and so the great challenge is to speak clearly, beautifully and with inevitability.

The next time you look into the mirror, just look at the way the ears rest next to the head; look at the way the hairline grows; think of all the little bones in your wrist. It is a miracle. And the dance is a celebration of that miracle.

The body says what words cannot.

Censorship is the height of vanity.

The reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living.

Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

Modern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.

My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement.

Art is eternal for it reveals the inner landscape which is the soul of man.

When you start with an idea, or something hits you, then you have to follow that through to the end, and it’s the following through to the end that makes the pattern. That, for me, is choreography.

I believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can’t stop.

I believe that we learn by practice… it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which come shape of achievement, a sense of one’s being, a satisfaction of spirit.

I believe in life you need to always ask for everything politely and nicely, and then if they say no you do what you wanted to do anyway

Government ought to be all outside and no inside. Everybody knows that corruption thrives in secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety.

I think I need a psychiatrist because I do believe I am mentally disturbed in some way.

I do not believe in starving myself.

Only those who believe attempt the seemingly impossible.

If you believe Jesus ever had a good word for war or torture or tax cuts for the rich, or raping the earth, or refusing water to dying migrants, then you might as well believe bunnies lay painted eggs.

Clown’ was written when I couldn’t find anyone who believed in me as an artist. Maybe those labels will think twice next time a young songwriter comes along.

One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.