“Dance constitutes a true recapturing of… freedom and childish play.”

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.

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.

I have a great need for affection from an audience. I don’t know whether this is because I had such a tough life when I was a child.

A lot can be said with just a look, or the way the body moves. Each song is a different character. So each song takes on a different movement of the body. And the body has to go with the subject and the attitude that you have toward that subject.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.

I would feel no hesitation in saying that it is the responsibility of a decent human being to give assistance to a child who is being attacked by a rabid dog.

I’m a child of God first. Before I became a celebrity, I was baptized a Christian.

Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.

I don’t join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn’t have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in Heaven – that’s none of my business, ultimately. I won’t lecture her on the philosophy of science.