There are joys so complete, so all perfect, that one should not survive them.

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.

I see only the ideal. But no ideals have ever been fully successful on this earth.

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.

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

Man must speak, then sing, then dance. The speaking is the brain, the thinking man. The singing is the emotion. The dancing is the Dionysian ecstasy which carries away all.

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.