Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart. The instrument through which the dance speaks is also the instrument through which life is lived ... the human body.

At the time I started in ballet they were dancing 'The Spirit of Champagne' on pointe, in Paris. I thought, 'I don't want to dance the spirit of champagne, I want to drink it!

You see, when weaving a blanket, an Indian woman leaves a flaw in the weaving of that blanket to let the soul out.

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

Dance is the hidden langauge of the soul, of the body.

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.

Nothing is more revealing than movement.