“The center of the stage is where I am.”

The body says what words cannot.

Censorship is the height of vanity.

The reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living.

Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

Modern dance isn’t anything except one thing in my mind: the freedom of women in America.

My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement.

Art is eternal for it reveals the inner landscape which is the soul of man.

When you start with an idea, or something hits you, then you have to follow that through to the end, and it’s the following through to the end that makes the pattern. That, for me, is choreography.

I believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can’t stop.

I believe that we learn by practice… it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which come shape of achievement, a sense of one’s being, a satisfaction of spirit.

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.

I don’t judge too much as long as it’s good. As long as it’s good music and good artistry, I’m with it.

Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.

Here in England, everyone’s a pop star, innit, whereas in America they believe in the term artist.

When you become an artist you’re working away from home for so much time. You really see what the use of time means to you once you’re an artist and you travel so much.

The artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling. If you don’t believe me, ask Van Gogh, who produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life.

Working with some of the best makeup artists has taught me a lot of amazing tricks to making me feel more confident, and I can’t wait to share them with you guys.

No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.

Business is fun. Controlling your own destiny is fun. Creating an idea and turning it into a movie; finding an artist and guiding their career and bringing them to some type of status – there’s joy in that.