“My heroines are part of me and my heroes are part of what I’d like to know.”

Theater people are always pining and agonizing because they’re afraid that they’ll be forgotten. And in America they’re quite right. They will be.

Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times.

Then I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down… and kissed him. And the world cracked open.

I am completely absorbed by the music and the steps I choose to respond to the music.

What they wanted was something newly experienced, and therefore unknown and hard to attain.

Ours is an upbeat, a hurried, hasty beat. It keeps pressing us to go farther, to include everything so that we can savor everything, so that we can know everything.

But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises.

Living is a form of not being sure, not know what next or how… The artists never entirely knows.

Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.

Find the passion. It takes great passion and great energy to do anything creative. I would go so far as to say you can’t do it without that passion.

Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.

The universe lies before you on the floor, in the air, in the mysterious bodies of your dancers, in your mind.

No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.

To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.

The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.

Dancing is such a despised and dishonored trade that if you tell a doctor or a laywer you do choreography he’ll look at you as if you were a hummingbird.

Virtue has her heroes too As well as Fame and Fortune.

They found our hero in the gutter with a diamond ring and a gun.

I can’t explain it, but from the first day I stepped into a wrestling ring, I knew that one day I was going to be a big superstar. I knew that one day I would be the NWA World Heavyweight Champion like my hero, Lou Thesz.

Eugene V. Debs has always been one of my heroes.

I think it’s really easy to be the altruistic hero of your own narrative and story.

Heroes have a rough time because they stand up when they ought not to, they speak when they ought not to; they always have to go that extra mile.

A hero is someone right who doesn’t change.

When I structured my career, I looked at Muhammad Ali, which is my all-time favorite and an idol of mine, and what he has done for this sport. He was a real-life hero.