I don't think in art there is ever a precedent; each moment is a new one and terrifying and threatening and bursting with hope.

I want to make people feel intensely alive. I'd rather have them against me than indifferent.

I love words very much. I've always loved to talk, and I've always love words — the words that rest in your mouth, what words mean and how you taste them and so on. And for me the spoken word can be used almost as a gesture.

Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.

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.

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.