The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
AGNES DE MILLEWhat they wanted was something newly experienced, and therefore unknown and hard to attain.
More Agnes de Mille Quotes
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They are just a lot of isolated individuals jiggling in a kind of self-hypnosis and dancing with others only to remind themselves that we are not completely alone in this world.
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I want one word on my tombstone – dancer.
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Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
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In the same way the lifted leg of an arabesque becomes a wing, and not a mechanical leverage like a raised trap door.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made.
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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.
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A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.
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I think ought to have more and correct some of the matters fate fails to take care of.
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But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises.
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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!
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The universe lies before you on the floor, in the air, in the mysterious bodies of your dancers, in your mind.
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great artists can be uncertain. Of course they are while strugggling to find solutions.
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What have we got here in America that we believe we cannot live without?
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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.
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The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
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Dance in the body you have.
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Then I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down… and kissed him. And the world cracked open.
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What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule.
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From this voyage no one returns poor or weary.
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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.
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So that we will miss nothing. Partly it’s greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.
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My heroines are part of me and my heroes are part of what I’d like to know.
AGNES DE MILLE