Nothing is more revealing than movement.

You have no right to go before a public without an adequate technique, just because you feel. Anything feels - a leaf feels, a storm feels - what right have you to do that? You have to have speech, and it's a cultivated speech.

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.

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

If I can't dance, I don't care if my dances are ever done again!

I don't try to tell the dancers exactly what a dance means before they do it.

I use the words gods and goddesses principally, I think, to mean beautiful bodies - bodies that are absolute instruments. And I believe in discipline, I believe in a very definite technique.