It seems to me monstrous that anyone should believe that the jazz rhythm expresses America. Jazz rhythm expresses the primitive savage.

America knows nothing of food, love, or art.

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

I was born by the sea, and I have noticed that all the great events of my life have taken place by the sea. My first idea of movement, of the dance, certainly came from the rhythm of the waves.

Will and energy sometimes prove greater than either genius or talent or temperament.

Virtuous people are simply those who have not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them.

All my life I have struggled to make one authentic gesture.