“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.”

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.

We can’t stand silence, because silence induces thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.

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

Dancers aren’t made of their technique, but their passion.

This is the precise difference between dancing and acrobatics. The dancer tries to express something; the acrobat merely pulls, raises, stretches and grinds.

I think ought to have more and correct some of the matters fate fails to take care of.

The practice mirror is to be used for the correction of faults, not for a love affair, and the figure you watch should not become your dearest friend.

No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made.

Emily Dickinson provided four or more alternates for every word; Beethoven wrestled with endings to the point of exhaustion; in our day Jerome Robbins and his lack of decision are a byword in the dance profession.

I just assumed we were being sent up. But now I see they were paying tribute to us

If Afghan soldiers continue to kill American soldiers as is happening these days, it can hardly be assumed that they will stay in Afghanistan in the long term. And what role are they to play?

She had always assumed that she would have years to sort out the meaning of life…