Alvin Ailey Quotes

#1. I always want more. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#2. My dancers must be able to do anything, and I don't care if they are black or white or purple or green. I want to help show my people how beautiful they are. I want to hold up the mirror to my audience that says this is the way people can be, this is how open people can be. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#3. My lasting impression of Truman Capote is that he was a terribly gentle, terribly sensitive, and terribly sad man. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#4. No matter what you write or choreograph, you feel it's not enough. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#5. Everything in dancing is style, allusion, the essence of many thoughts and feelings. The abstraction of many moments. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#6. One of the worst things about racism is what it does to young people. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#7. My feelings about myself have been terrible. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#8. Sometimes you feel bad about yourself when there's no reason to. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#9. I'm attracted to long-legged girls with long arms and a little head. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#10. Nothing personal; I just don't have people over. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#11. I wanted to explore black culture, and I wanted that culture to be a revelation. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#12. The creative process is not controlled by a switch you can simply turn on or off; it's with you all the time. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#13. I always want to have more dancers in my company. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#14. Racism tears down your insides so that no matter what you achieve, you're not quite up to snuff. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#15. But the dance speaks to everyone. Otherwise it wouldn't work. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#16. One of the processes of your life is to constantly break down that inferiority, to constantly reaffirm that I Am Somebody. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#17. Lena Horne is the sweetest and most adorable woman in the world. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#18. Money is a never-ending problem. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#19. I am trying to show the world that we are all human beings and that color is not important. What is important is the quality of our work. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#20. Choreography is mentally draining, but there's a pleasure in getting into the studio with the dancers and the music. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#21. Dance is for everybody. I believe that the dance came from the people and that it should always be delivered back to the people. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#22. It will take very sophisticated marketing to achieve our aim of bringing more black people into the theater. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#23. Making dances is an act of progress; it is an act of growth, an act of music, an act of teaching, an act of celebration, an act of joy. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#24. To be who you are and become what you are capable of is the only goal worth living. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#25. In this business, life is one long fund-raising effort. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#26. We still spend more time chasing funds than we do in the studio in creative work. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#27. There was still no likelihood that we could make a living from dance. We were doing it because we loved it ... We realized how full we felt; we were surrounded by music and dancing and joy. - Author: Alvin Ailey

#28. If you live in the elite world of dance, you find yourself in a world rife with racism. Let's face it. - Author: Alvin Ailey