I believe one thing: that today is yesterday and tomorrow is today and you can't stop.

To me, a building - if it's beautiful - is the love of one man, he's made it out of his love for space, materials, things like that.

Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.

It is difficult to see the great dance effects as they happen, to see them accurately, catch them fast in memory. It is even more difficult to verbalize them for critical discussion. The particular essence of a performance, its human sweep of articulate rhythm in space and in time has no specific terminology to describe it by.

The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body. I don't leap and jump anymore. I look at young dancers, and I am envious, more aware of what glories the body contains. But sensitivity is not made dull by age.

In 1980, a well-meaning fundraiser came to see me and said, "Miss Graham, the most powerful thing you have going for you to raise money is your respectability." I wanted to spit. Respectable! Show me any artist who wants to be respectable.

I never thought of myself as being a genius. I don't know what genius is. I think a far better expression is a retriever, a lovely strong golden retriever that brings things back from the past, or retrieves things from our common blood memory