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There is something fearfully strengthening about cutting free even if the ties bandage the heart itself.

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
Heart
Bandage
Something
Bandages
Strengthening
Ties
Independence
Cutting
Free
Even
Fearfully

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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Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
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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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The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.
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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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Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.
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My heroines are part of me and my heroes are part of what I'd like to know.
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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.
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I want one word on my tombstone - dancer.
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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.
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No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
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Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
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