Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.

Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart.

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.

You give all your life to doing this one thing. It sounds grim, it sounds frightening - it isn't - it has a great gaiety at times and a great wonder.

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!

Think of the magic of that foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It's a miracle, and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.

I've relaxed my feelings about other companies performing my works. I have never in principle been against my ballets being danced by other companies. Rather, it is that we lack the time, space and money to insure that they are done well. To me, the only sin is mediocrity.