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.

Dancing is a very living art. It is essentially of the moment, although a very old art. A dancer's art is lived while he is dancing. Nothing is left of his art except the pictures and the memories--when his dancing days are over.

No animal ever has an ugly body until it is domesticated. It is the same with the human body.

I get up, I fall down, all the while I am dancing.

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

A dancer, more than any other human being, dies two deaths: the first, the physical when the powerfully trained body will no longer respond as you would wish. After all, I choreographed for myself. I never choreographed what I could not do. I changed steps in Medea and other ballets to accommodate the change. But I knew. And it haunted me. I only wanted to dance.

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