All my lovers have been geniuses; it's the one thing that I insist.

The finest inheritance you can give to a child is to allow it to make its own way, completely on its own feet.

Eleonora Duse said, "Tell me about Deirdre and Patrick," and made me repeat to her all their little sayings and ways, and show her their photos, which she kissed and cried over. She never said "Cease to grieve", but she grieved with me, and, for the first time since their death, I felt I was not alone.

I would rather live in Russia on black bread and vodka than in the United States at the best hotels. America knows nothing of food, love or art.

The artist is the only lover; he alone has the pure vision of beauty, and love is the vision of the soul when it is permitted to gaze upon immortal beauty.

Now I am going to reveal to you something which is very pure, a totally white thought. It is always in my heart; it blooms at each of my steps... The Dance is love, it is only love, it alone, and that is enough... I, then, it is amorously that I dance: to poems, to music but now I would like to no longer dance to anything but the rhythm of my soul.

Before I was born my mother was in great agony of spirit and in a tragic situation. She could take no food except iced oysters and champagne. If people ask me when I began to dance, I reply 'In my mother's womb, probably as a result of the oysters and Champagne.'