First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"France made me what I am. I will be grateful forever. The people of Paris have given me everything. They have given me their hearts, and I have given them mine. I am ready, captain, to give them my life. You can use me as you wish."
"I think Sabra should have won."
"I don’t even know if I’ll ever feel what I did when he finished dancing his solo on Wednesday night’s [2007-08-15] show. When he left the ballet world, he was losing his love of dance, and to me, watching that solo, he came full circle. He came back.”"
"I think you're talking crap."
"You dance as if you've already won the competition."
"He just walked away like he was God's gift to the world."
"Book/Play2 (Book/Play2)"
"Book/Play1 (Book/Play1)"
"Jumps and turns aren't hard; artistry is. To create a whole new world for the audience, that's the fantasy of ballet."
"The ‘Romeo and Juliet’ story, we’re so past that. I have a very deep respect for art, but I also think we have a lot to learn from pop culture. And that is the future. Either you can ignore it and be stuck in the past, or you can learn from it."
"When I was younger, I got into a lot of trouble. Getting the opportunity to dance really got me out of that.”"
"I think Sabra should have won. When they [the contestants] had a week off [over the Fourth of July], Danny brought Sabra to New York and we got to know her. People said, ‘There's no way she's only been dancing four years.' But I said, ‘She's been touched by God. God gave her the ability to understand her body.'"
"I know very well that I'm not the dancer that Danny is. He's on a completely different level. For the last four years, I've known who he is, and I just wanted to talk to him. So standing there with him tonight [as the final two] was the craziest thing."
"This latest skirmish in the high art/low art war has played out most fiercely over Mr. Tidwell, who shocked balletomanes when he left American Ballet Theater in 2005, then added insult to injury by joining the third season of “So You Think You Can Dance.”"
"In my opinion Danny was far and away the best."
"I've always felt that complement of opposites: body and soul, solitude and companionship, and in the dance studio, contraction and release, rise and fall."
"I can't really hear the audience applause when I'm on stage. I'm totally immersed in the piece. But sometimes I get a lot of it and wonder, "Now, why did they applaud here?" If it's a white crowd, they usually applaud because they think it's a pretty movement. If it's a black crowd, it's usually because they identify with the message."
"Dance is bigger than the physical body. When you extend your arm, it doesn't stop at the end of your fingers, because you're dancing bigger than that; you're dancing spirit."
"I have been guilty of watching Westerns without acknowledging that Native Americans have gone through the same madness as African Americans. Isn't it extraordinary that sometimes the most offended have not seen others being offended?"
"People come to see beauty, and I dance to give it to them."
"Watching clips of her, it's so amazing that she was such a part of our film history from the very beginning. I'm sure it wasn't easy being a child star, although she went on to become an ambassador, so she re-invented herself along the way. But it's a great loss. I wish all the best for her family and thank her for her contribution."
"Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter. There were paper-doll books of her and of the Dionne Quintuplets-five identical girls born to a French-Canadian family and of the famous dollhouse of the actress Colleen Moore, which contained every luxury conceivable in perfect miniature, including a tiny phonograph that played Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting. I must have seen her dancing with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in The Littlest Rebel, but I remember her less as a movie star than as a presence, like President Roosevelt, or Lindbergh, whose baby had been stolen; but she was a little girl whose face was everywhere on glass mugs and in coloring books as well as in the papers."
"When the spirit of the people is lower than at any other time during this Depression, it is a splendid thing that for just 15 cents, an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles."
"Macho attitudes usually fall victim to hard work, timely humor, and an absence of resentment."
"Politicians are actors too, don't you think?"
"I have no trouble being taken seriously as a woman and a diplomat here. My only problems have been with Americans who, in the beginning, refused to believe I had grown up since my movies."
"Sunnybrook Farm is now a parking lot; the petticoats are in the garbage can, where they belong in the modern world; and I detest censorship."
"I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph."
"Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine. I kept reaching up for his hand, but he hadn't looked down and seemed unaware. Fannie called his attention to what I was doing, so he stopped short, bent low over me, his eyes wide and rows of brilliant teeth showing in a wide smile. When he took my hand in his, it felt large and cool."
"Some of you may recollect a little girl with clean and curled hair, starched skirts, ruffles, and bows. That perception was wrong. The reality was a kid in blue jeans and sentimental sneakers, dirty hands, dirty face, usually climbing a tree. .. I never even aspired to be an actress. Even when I was very young, I had three aspirations: to be a surgeon, or an FBI agent, or a pie salesman. .. President Roosevelt patted and squeezed me in 1938. Truman, Eisenhower, and Nixon shook my hand, but then I was older. Ford kissed me. Jimmy Carter kissed me in the White House, which means I was even older. And now I am simply female, black, and unemployed."
"I think we all learn from the past. I just feel we shouldn't live there. We shouldn't live in the past. I live for today, and to me, the most important moment is now."
"People talk about 'my career,' but 'career' is too pompous a word. It was a job, and I have always felt very privileged to be paid for what I love doing."
"I'm a tough old broad from Brooklyn. Don't try to make me into something I'm not. If you want someone to tiptoe down the Barkley staircase in crinoline and politely ask where the cattle went, get another girl."
"With Barbara Stanwyck, here was a true pro, in her last year of screen stardom. We shot mostly on locations just to save money. One day, I saw her applying her own makeup beside the truck before the shoot. She looked up and just shrugged. Who could blame her? This production was cost-efficient."
"Here was an actress that never played just one side of a character. She always played the truth. I once asked Barbara Stanwyck the secret of acting, and she said, "Just be truthful, and if you can fake that, you've got it made.""
"Working with Barbara Stanwyck was one of the greatest pleasures of my career."
"There's nothing phony about her, either in life or on the screen."
"My only problem is finding a way to play my fortieth fallen female in a different way from my thirty-ninth."
"I never got a Oscar. I never had an acting lesson. Life was my only training."
"I could understand if they picked Katharine Hepburn, but of course she wouldn't do it. But when they asked me, I thought at first it was a mistake. I thought they got me mixed up with Bette Davis. Attention embarrasses me. I don't like to be on display. I was always an extrovert in my work, but when it comes time to be myself I'll take a powder every time."
"God is love, but get it in writing."
"I don't want to say I'm envious of any other woman's body. It's a bad myth to perpetuate. Women have enough trouble liking themselves."
"When I was a little kid I thought I would grow up to be black and sing jazz in nightclubs."
"If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly … very slowly."
"I have everything I had twenty years ago, only it's all a little bit lower."
"It's all true. It's true I didn't want to be a dancer. What I really wanted to be was a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Then at 14 I discovered girls, and began to study dancing diligently. At that time dancing was the only way you could put your arm around the girl. Dancing was courtship. Only later did I discover you dance joy. You dance love. You dance dreams. Of course, the Pittsburgh Pirates lost a hell of a shortstop."
"I really don't know why I clicked. I didn't want to be a dancer, I just did it to work my way through college. But I was always an athlete and gymnast, so it came naturally."