Agnes de Mille Quotes - Page 2

Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.

I want one word on my tombstone - dancer.

Dancing is such a despised and dishonored trade that if you tell a doctor or a laywer you do choreography he'll look at you as if you were a hummingbird. Dancers don't get invited to visit people. It is assumed a boy dancer will run off with the spoons and a girl with the head of the house.

Dance in the body you have.

The universe lies before you on the floor, in the air, in the mysterious bodies of your dancers, in your mind. From this voyage no one returns poor or weary.

To make up a dance, I still need, as I needed then, a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea.

One of the good things about my having some recognition is that I can do something for the people I think ought to have more and correct some of the matters fate fails to take care of.

No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.

A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.

Ours is an upbeat, a hurried, hasty beat. It keeps pressing us to go farther, to include everything so that we can savor everything, so that we can know everything, so that we will miss nothing. Partly it's greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.

There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.

My heroines are part of me and my heroes are part of what I'd like to know.

Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.

I studied the way I danced- to the point of dropping.

Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times.