The story of dance in the Western world is as much an alternative vision of the events of history as is the folk history told for generations by primal people.

Art is a staple of mankind... So urgent, so utterly linked with the pulse of feeling that it becomes the singular sign of life when every other aspect of civilization fails.

The nobility danced for the sake of social grace, to exhibit their finery...peasants danced to make themselves happy, to escape the routine of their life, and to meet their future wives and husbands.

Art doesn't want to be familiar. It wants to astonish us. Or, in some cases, to enrage us. It wants to move us. To touch us. Not accommodate us, make us comfortable.

Among the language of the American Indians, there is no word for 'art'... For Indians, everything is art... therefore needs no name.

We've reached a point where we are not a very empathetic people, and art without empathy is art without an audience. My basic viewpoint is that without art we're alone.

Dance has been transformed from an involuntary motor discharge, a ceremonial rite, into a work of art, conscious of, intended for, observation.

For Indians, images are a means of celebrating mystery and not a manner of explaining it

At the root of all the varied manifestations of dancing, lies the common impulse to resort to movement to externalize emotional states which we cannot extemalize by rational means.

In the New Hebrides, any dancer making a mistake was assaulted, wounded, and possibly killed by bowmen posted to keep careful watch for inaccuracies in rituals.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

Perfect is the enemy of done.

35. God is entitled to a portion of our income—not because He needs it but because we need to give it.

Consequently, the tone, particularly that of the Viennese anti-Semitic press, seemed to me unworthy of the cultural tradition of a great nation.

The composer...joins Heaven and Earth with threads of sounds.

Misfortune was my god.

Audiences trust Westerns when you hit the right tone. I think they're not in vogue, but they will always be in vogue when you hit the right note.

It is our homes and families that need reforming in this increasingly materialistic and secular world.

The world we live in is but thickened light.

If you don't find some way to discuss what's going on inside you, it can come out in other ways that are self-destructive.