“The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.”

Wherever a dancer stands is holy ground.

The center of the stage is where I am.

Nothing is more revealing than movement.

Dancers have more bones than most people and on the days when you work hard you are sure that you have somehow accumulated more bones than you started with.

No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.

The main thing, of course, always, is the fact that there is only one of you in the world, just one, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost. Ambition is not enough; necessity is everything.

I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It’s permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable.

We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.

Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

The body is a sacred garment. It’s your first and last garment; it is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor.

I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of man–the landscape of his soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human can be.

You have no right to go before a public without an adequate technique, just because you feel. Anything feels – a leaf feels, a storm feels – what right have you to do that? You have to have speech, and it’s a cultivated speech.

Stand up! Keep your backs straight! Remember that this is where the wings grow.

What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.

I’d rather an audience like me than dislike me, but I’d rather they disliked me than be apathetic, because that is the kiss of death.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.

When American life is most American it is apt to be most theatrical.

Advice? I don’t offer advice. Not my business. Your life is what you make it.

And I knew that it was better to live out one’s absurdity than to die for that of others.

With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish ’twere done. Not till the hours of light return All we have built do we discern.

Waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.

The older you get, the more you should learn to love life and appreciate the beauty that comes with age.

For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.

For me, traveling and living are the same. How you travel is a symbol of your life.