“A dancer must listen to his body and pay homage to it. Behind the movement lies this terrible, driving passion, this necessity. I won’t settle for anything less.”

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

If you feel depressed you shouldn’t go out on the street because it will show on your face and you’ll give it to others. Misery is a communicable disease.

The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.

I did not choose to be a dancer. I was chosen.

I want to make people feel intensely alive. I’d rather have them against me than indifferent.

Dancers are the messengers of the gods.

We look at the dance to impart the sensation of living in an affirmation of life, to energize the spectator into keener awareness of the vigor, the mystery, the humor, the variety, and the wonder of life. This is the function of the American dance.

I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.

I am certain that movement never lies. There is only one law of posture I have been able to discover – the perpendicular line connecting heaven and earth.

Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing.

The spine is the tree of life. Respect it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You will only get out of a dance class what you bring to it. Learn by practice.

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

The past is not dead; it is not even past. People live on inner time; the moment in which a decisive thought or feeling takes place can be at any time. Timeless feelings are common to all of us.

All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.

I want to spend today kissing every part of your body.

The big difference for me is that, as I get older, I find it’s a lot easier to stay in shape than it is to get back in shape.

Burnt mirror, smeared glass. Do you like what you see? If my body is a temple, then my poetry is the darkest vestry. My mouth is a chalice, and these words are sacramental.

Our bodies need real, fresh food to maintain health.

Still, I wrote. Even when the police where coming. Even when my whole body hurt, and the slightest sound would make me quake.

Inside, we are ageless and when we talk to ourselves, it’s the same age of the person we were talking to when we were little. It’s the body that is changing around that ageless center.

With all these past fears still written on my skin, it bruises me to let you in. Trauma’s that this body holds, still guard these tactile lips untold.

PAIN, n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another.