Judith Jamison People Quotations

One thing I cannot stand is when people say, 'Hi, how are you?' and they don't wait to hear how I am. They're just going through the motions. I say to people: 'Keep it human. Keep it alive. Don't turn into a robot.' You have to hear what the other person is saying clearly.

I tell young people that people aren't just going to flock to you as your mentors. You have to seek them out. It could be your next-door neighbor; it could be somebody upstairs from you, somebody down the block from you. An aunt or an uncle. Some relative. A parent.

People don't remember me for how high my legs went, even though they went up very high, and how many pirouettes I did. They don't remember me for that. They remember me and any other dancer because something touched them inside. It's an indelible memory on the heart and in the mind.

The world is full of ways for people to dance. Concert dance doesn't get its due.

If people all over the world, year after year, request that you do 'Revelations,' you do 'Revelations.'

So many people dwell on negativity and I've survived by ignoring it: it dims your light and it's harder each time to turn the power up again.

I've danced all over the world, and people are people. We cannot cut off from each other in life. In order to lead, you can't do that.

I want people to have their own visions for the dance. Some generations will sit back and relate to the music. And the young people ...they'll have the dance right in front of them.

Dancing is being trusted with other people's guts; choreographing is trusting other people with yours. When I choreograph I'm giving a dancer something to do and trusting the dancer to do it and build on it.

People come to see beauty, and I dance to give it to them.