“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.”

“Dancing was the only activity he enjoyed with a woman, and he regretted that court dancing was no longer in vogue. If you want to bed a woman, do it in the bedroom. If you want to seduce her, do it in the dance.”

“What matters is not what you paint but what your hand dances. The painting is only a notation of the dance of the hand, of the gesture of love.”

“We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.”

“And you can spit-shine your shoes Pittsburgh, you're going dancing with the Lord of Lords, Lord Stanley!”

“O my child, who wronged you first, and began
First the dance of death that you dance so well?
Soul for soul: and I think the soul of a man
Shall answer for yours in hell.”

“If you hear a song you like, start dancing. That's what I do, I'll just start dancing, and that's it. That's all there is to it.”

“Life is the dancer and you are the dance.”

“I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance.”

“Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he.”