Confidence is a trait that has to be earned honestly and refreshed constantly; you have to work as hard to protect your skills as you did to develop them. . . The one thing that creative souls around the world have in common is that they all have to practice to maintain their skills. Art is a vast democracy of habit.

When you stimulate your body, your brain comes alive in ways you can't simulate in a sedentary position.

I have a sort of tactility about music. I go into record stores and just run my fingers over it, the spines.

I have always felt one of the things dance should do - its business being so clearly physical - is challenge the culture's gender stereotypes.

That's what improvising is like for me. There's no tollbooth between my impulse and my action.

Art is an investigation.

I was privileged to be able to study a year with Martha Graham, the last year she was teaching.