The nobility danced for the sake of social grace, to exhibit their finery...peasants danced to make themselves happy, to escape the routine of their life, and to meet their future wives and husbands.

Art is a staple of mankind... So urgent, so utterly linked with the pulse of feeling that it becomes the singular sign of life when every other aspect of civilization fails.

Art doesn't want to be familiar. It wants to astonish us. Or, in some cases, to enrage us. It wants to move us. To touch us. Not accommodate us, make us comfortable.

Among the language of the American Indians, there is no word for 'art'... For Indians, everything is art... therefore needs no name.

We've reached a point where we are not a very empathetic people, and art without empathy is art without an audience. My basic viewpoint is that without art we're alone.

Dance has been transformed from an involuntary motor discharge, a ceremonial rite, into a work of art, conscious of, intended for, observation.

For Indians, images are a means of celebrating mystery and not a manner of explaining it

The story of dance in the Western world is as much an alternative vision of the events of history as is the folk history told for generations by primal people.

At the root of all the varied manifestations of dancing, lies the common impulse to resort to movement to externalize emotional states which we cannot extemalize by rational means.

In the New Hebrides, any dancer making a mistake was assaulted, wounded, and possibly killed by bowmen posted to keep careful watch for inaccuracies in rituals.

Darkness doesn't fall at a predictable schedule. Darkness can overwhelm you any time of the day, as you know well.

Don't be like the preacher who thought about praying while making love with his life and thought about love while praying.

I grew up with the word "volunteer" as a very powerful word in my family. I was inspired by my mother and by how selfless our family was toward others who didn't have enough.

I shan't marry a prince!

Skepticism is a discipline fit to purify the mind of prejudice and render it all the more apt, when the time comes, to believe and to act wisely.

Write a smart joke and people want to talk about it and keep the dialogue going. Also, if you can make someone laugh, it's a pronouncement that they like you on some level.

It's hard being bisexual, omnisexual, multisexual, whatever you want to call it, when people have their agenda and expect you to just represent their agenda.

Most of your suffering comes from the lack of understanding of yourself and others.

When a task seems too daunting to even approach, break it up into little bits.

In Mexico your wishes have a dream power. When you want to see someone, he turns up.