“There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.”

The acrobat is lost in a web of muscles the dancer is all but invisible in projected idea.

Dancers don’t get invited to visit people. It is assumed a boy dancer will run off with the spoons and a girl with the head of the house.

I learned three important things in college-to use a library, to memorize quickly and visually, to drop asleep at any time given a horizontal surface and fifteen minutes.

So that we will miss nothing. Partly it’s greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.

Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible

But all of these knew very well what they did not want, and what they did not want was the current coin, the well-worn usage.

A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.

One of the good things about my having some recognition is that I can do something for the people

We have the most varied and imaginative bathrooms in the world, we have kitchens with the most gimmicks, we have houses with every possible electrical gadget to save ourselves all kinds of trouble – all so that we can have leisure. Leisure, leisure, leisure!

When I dance I am really meditating rather then performing for an audience.

So that we don’t go mad in the leisure, we have color TV. So that there will never, never, be a moment of silence, we have radio and Muzak.

Dance in the body you have.

Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times. The dancers don’t even look at one another.

Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.

What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule.

From this voyage no one returns poor or weary.

A decade of cutting away dead flesh, cauterizing old scars ripped open over and over and still it is not enough.

Each of us is carving a stone, erecting a column, or cutting a piece of stained glass in the construction of something much bigger than ourselves.

Energy has to be fed from a source. If you don’t feed the source, it dissipates entirely.

I’ve never really felt that I’ve had the right hair cut, or had the right clothes.

There was a lot of stuff [in Rock of Ages] that had effects in it and I thought it was too smooth.

The fact is that the British Museum had a complete specimen of a dodo in their collection up until the 18th century

You can always count on the New York Times to cut your legs off.

I don’t think it’s fair – you get married, you give your wife a wedding ring. I think you should give her a mood ring.