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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
Life
Next
Dark
Moments
Sure
Leap
Form
Dies
Entirely
Littles
Wrong
Discovery
May
Faith
Guess
Little
Moment
Begin
Take
Living
Creativity
Never
Artist
Knowing

More quotes by Agnes de Mille

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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.
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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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Then I did the simplest thing in the world. I leaned down... and kissed him. And the world cracked open.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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I want one word on my tombstone - dancer.
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The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
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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.
Agnes de Mille
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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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No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.
Agnes de Mille
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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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I had had to learn the difference between the bearable fatigue and the unbearable, the fatigue of fear. The first can be cured by a night's sleep the second kills.
Agnes de Mille
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A good education is usually harmful to a dancer. A good calf is better than a good head.
Agnes de Mille
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Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.
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Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
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My heroines are part of me and my heroes are part of what I'd like to know.
Agnes de Mille