George Balanchine

"Ballet is important and significant – yes. But first of all, it is a pleasure."

- George Balanchine

"Why are you stingy with yourselves? Why are you holding back? What are you saving for – for another time? There are not other timers. There is only now."

- George Balanchine

"Why are you stingy with yourselves? Why are you holding back? What are you saving for – for another time? There are not other timers. There is only now. Right now."

- George Balanchine

"Ballet dancing is arduous, strenuous activity. Students are engaged in physical training that rivals the training Olympic athletes undergo."

- George Balanchine

"First comes the sweat. Then comes the beauty if you’re very lucky and have said your prayers."

- George Balanchine

"Choreography is simpler than you think. Just go and do, and don’t think so much about it. Just make something interesting."

- George Balanchine

"God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it-from what I see, from what the dancers do, from what others do…."

- George Balanchine

"I could never make a ballet by wrinkling my brow and concentrating. If you set out deliberately to make a masterpiece, how will you ever get it finished."

- George Balanchine

"My muse must come to me on union time."

- George Balanchine

"Put a man and a girl on stage and there is already a story; a man and two girls, there’s already a plot."

- George Balanchine

"Dance is music made visible."

- George Balanchine

"Dancers are instruments, like a piano the choreographer plays."

- George Balanchine

"The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they reach the audience through the eye."

- George Balanchine

"It’s like the time capsule with everything in it. Or like the seed that when you plant it, becomes the enormous tree with leaves and fruit."

- George Balanchine

"One is born to be a dancer. No teacher can work miracles, nor will years of training make a good dancer of an untalented pupil. One may be able to acquire a certain technical facility, but no one can ever ‘acquire an exceptional talent.’"

- George Balanchine

"I don’t want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance."

- George Balanchine

"Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned."

- George Balanchine