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Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.

Agnes de Mille

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Agnes de Mille
Age: 88 †
Born: 1905
Born: September 18
Died: 1993
Died: October 6
Ballet Dancer
Ballet Master
Choreographer
Dancer
Theatrical Director
Harlem
New York
Moments
Sure
Leap
Form
Dies
Entirely
Littles
Wrong
Discovery
May
Faith
Guess
Little
Moment
Begin
Take
Living
Creativity
Never
Artist
Knowing
Life
Next
Dark

More quotes by Agnes de Mille

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I learned three important things in college-to use a library, to memorize quickly and visually, to drop asleep at any time given a horizontal surface and fifteen minutes. What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule.
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The practice mirror is to be used for the correction of faults, not for a love affair, and the figure you watch should not become your dearest friend.
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Dancers aren't made of their technique, but their passion.
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No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.
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Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times.
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The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
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Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times. The dancers don't even look at one another. They are just a lot of isolated individuals jiggling in a kind of self-hypnosis and dancing with others only to remind themselves that we are not completely alone in this world.
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We can't stand silence, because silence induces thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
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Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.
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Dance constitutes a true recapturing of... freedom and childish play.
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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.
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To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.
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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.
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Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
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To make up a dance, I still need, as I needed then, a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea.
Agnes de Mille
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I want one word on my tombstone - dancer.
Agnes de Mille
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When I dance I am really meditating rather then performing for an audience. I am completely absorbed by the music and the steps I choose to respond to the music.
Agnes de Mille
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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.
Agnes de Mille
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Living is a form of not being sure, not know what next or how... The artists never entirely knows.
Agnes de Mille
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The choreographic process is exhausting. It happens on one's feet after hours of work, and the energy required is roughly the equivalent of writing a novel and winning a tennis match simultaneously.
Agnes de Mille