You never advance without losing something en passant... you lose it because you're paying so much attention to the new thing.

Classical ballet will never die.

God gave us all exactly the same fingers, arms, legs, and feet, but in our different countries we divided them all a little differently as we feel it, do you understand?

You cannot create genius. All you can do is nurture it.

Hardly any generation wants to take the whole of the last generation, it just wants to take its best bits.

And then you have the classical ballerinas, they're like sopranos. Applied to the dance.

First of all, the most important, that is to learn everything good that has survived from other times, and carefully to watch the bad - and throw it out.

Somebody must always be doing something new, or life would get very dull.

As time goes on, all schools only get left alive if they have found something special themselves.

Nothing is done easily, first have the thing, then the thing has a success, then all sorts of difficulties arise through the success.

The smile is the dance of the face - the dance is the smile of the limbs.

If you command wisely, you'll be obeyed cheerfully.

Over the years it [the National Committee for Mental Hygiene] has championed for the promotion of 'mental health' despite the fact that nobody knows what it is or how to do it.

If you are going to try to go to war, or to prepare for war, in a capitalist country, you have got to let business make money out of the process or business won't work.

Basically speaking, conducting is quite a healthy profession.

I beseech you to consider that God does not deal by you as you deal with him.

While I'm optimistic about the direction the world is headed, generally, I think there is a need for constant vigilance and pressure on repressive governments.

I loved 'Junebug.' It was one of my favorite films, my favorite type of film.

I mean, there's plenty of artists who are making R&B music, but because of their ethnicity, it's considered something else.

For a fellow who's not to much to look at, you have the instincts of a champion.

Thou shalt prove That beauty is no beauty without love.