"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all of time,
this expression is unique.
And if you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium
and be lost.
The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is
nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly,
to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly
to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open."
--- from "Dance to The Piper" by Agnes DeMille
"If you don't do your dance, who will?"
from the video "The Wave"
"There is a central quality which is the root criterion of
life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. ....
The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives,
is the central search of any person,
and the crux of any individual person's story.
It is the search for those moments
and situations when we are most alive."
--- from the detailed table of contents of "The Timeless Way of Building"
"... We will live by our own choices, the deepest organismic sensings
of which we are capable, but we will not be shaped by the wishes,
the rules, the roles which others are all too eager to thrust upon us.
... Perhaps I can come to prize myself as the richly varied person I am.
Perhaps I can openly be more of this person. ..."
--- from "Becoming Partners", ch. 9
"... every moment of life is unique--a kiss, a sunset, a dance, a joke."
--- from "Free Play", p23
"We have no art. Everything we do is art."
--- from "Free Play", p19
"And that's life then: things as they are,"
This buzzing of the blue guitar."
--- from "The Man with the Blue Guitar"
"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."
--- from "The New York Sun (1897)"
"90% of success is showing up."
"If not now, when?"
"Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion."
"It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations."