Stand up! Keep your backs straight! Remember that this is where the wings grow.

Our arms start from the back because they were once wings.

Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

The body says what words cannot.

Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.

I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of man--the landscape of his soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human can be.

The body is a sacred garment. It's your first and last garment; it is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor.

Dance is the hidden langauge of the soul, of the body.

Misery is a communicable disease.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

Now you may hear songs of kindness From every singing bird And from every dancing heart Let kindness be the part of your being

Decide what you want. Believe you can have it. Don't let anything get in your way.

You can be happy even if your bones are broken, but no man is happy when his heart is heavy.

I grew up in California, which was not - at least in the '50s and '60s - a cultural oasis by any means. Certainly not Orange County, anyway.

It was at a vividly bad time in Norman Mailer's life that I met him, and a sort of water-treading time in mine. He had stabbed his wife, and I was a copy boy at Time magazine.

I can't do comedy that is cutting and vicious. If I knew I'd said something that was going to make someone feel bad, well, that supersedes everything.

Men know life too early. Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.

I think that Americans find the Australian humour and the energy of Australians very refreshing - we are quite self-deprecating, we're light-hearted and can have a laugh.

I belong deeply to myself.

Every artist, as child of his age, is impelled to express the spirit of his age.