The dancer's body is simply the luminous manifestation of her soul...This is the truly creative dancer, natural but not imitative, speaking in movement out of herself and out of something greater than all selves.

Dance is the movement of the universe concentrated in an individual.

It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.

The movement of the waves, of winds, of the earth is ever in the same lasting harmony. We do not stand on the beach and inquire of the ocean what was its movement of the past and what will be its movement of the future. We realize that the movement peculiar to its nature is eternal to its nature. The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the body.

I had discovered that love might be a pastime as well as a tragedy, and I gave myself to it with pagan innocence.

I intend to work for this dance of the future. I do not know whether I have the necessary qualities; I may have neither genius nor talent nor temperament. But I know that I have a Will; and will and energy sometimes prove greater than either genius or talent or temperament.

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