“Some of you are doomed to be artists.”

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.

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

If you feel depressed you shouldn’t go out on the street because it will show on your face and you’ll give it to others. Misery is a communicable disease.

The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.

I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.

I want to make people feel intensely alive. I’d rather have them against me than indifferent.

Dancers are the messengers of the gods.

We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.

Innate in nearly every artistic nature is a wanton, treacherous penchant for accepting injustice when it creates beauty and showing sympathy for and paying homage to aristocratic privilege.

I’m a creative guy, artistically with graphics.

Well, predominately, if I’m writing for another artist, I’m sitting there with them and we’re writing it together.

I try not to think retrospectively. It’s important, as an artist, to look forward, always. I do try to take work that involves some challenge. If you approach a piece of work and you’re going, “Yeah, yeah, I can do that,” then that’s kind of a red flag.

You stand your ground and you perform your art. That’s what the artist does. The artist is about perfection.

My mom was real into like a lot of different musical artists, real artists, even back when Jay-Z and Beyonce was together.

I’m really an artist. I really do this. I don’t need the money. It doesn’t matter to me.

No artist that beefs with me or talks down on my name has that many platinum songs. They’re all gold.