The pointes for girls, I always say, have to be like an elephant's trunk; strong and yet flexible and soft.

I could never make a ballet by wrinkling my brow and concentrating. If you set out deliberately to make a masterpiece, how will you ever get it finished?

Choreography is simpler than you think. Just go and do, and don't think so much about it. Just make something interesting.

My muse must come to me on union time.

It's like the time capsule with everything in it. Or like the seed that when you plant it, becomes the enormous tree with leaves and fruit. Everybody was in that little seed, and so everything can open. The tree of dance is like that. It just takes a long, long time to blossom.

In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell. We can't dance synonyms.

In my ballets, woman is first. Men are consorts. God made men to sing the praises of women. They are not equal to men: They are better.