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.

Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.

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

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.

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

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