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

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.

The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.

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

To make up a dance, I still need, as I needed then, a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea.

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

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.

Although I think of myself as the greatest heavyweight, I do respect the legends of the past for what they did. But they are not my heroes.

The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It’s the same thing, fear, but it’s what you do with it that matters.

Boxing is a dying sport, really. Years ago, the world heavyweight champion could be said to have reached the highest pinnacle of sport. Even in this country, boxers were heroes. Think of Henry Cooper and Frank Bruno.

Heroes and cowards feel exactly the same fear. Heroes just react to it differently.