The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
AGNES DE MILLEEmily 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.
More Agnes de Mille Quotes
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Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.
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great artists can be uncertain. Of course they are while strugggling to find solutions.
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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.
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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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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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The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
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I want one word on my tombstone – dancer.
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If you want to understand a nation, look at its dances and listen to its folk songs – don’t pay any attention to its politicians.
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Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.
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The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
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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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Destiny is made known silently.
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We can’t stand silence, because silence includes thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
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What they wanted was something newly experienced, and therefore unknown and hard to attain.
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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.
AGNES DE MILLE