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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.

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
Given
College
Schedules
Three
Minutes
Asleep
Important
Learned
Fifteen
Things
Justice
Drop
Memorize
Time
Learn
Diversity
Horizontal
Think
Use
Quickly
Visually
Thinking
Culture
Library
Creatively
Inspirational
Surface
Schedule

More quotes by Agnes de Mille

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I studied the way I danced- to the point of dropping.
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.
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Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
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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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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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Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.
Agnes de Mille
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Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times.
Agnes de Mille
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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.
Agnes de Mille
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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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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.
Agnes de Mille
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The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
Agnes de Mille
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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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Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
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.
Agnes de Mille
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Dancers aren't made of their technique, but their passion.
Agnes de Mille
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Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible
Agnes de Mille
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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.
Agnes de Mille
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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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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
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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.
Agnes de Mille