Agnes de Mille Quotations

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

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.

Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times.

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.

Theater people are always pining and agonizing because they're afraid that they'll be forgotten. And in America they're quite right. They will be.

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

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.

If you want to understand a nation, look at its dances and listen to its folk songs - don't pay any attention to its politicians.

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

We can't stand the silence because silence includes thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.