Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
Interpretation
Life is about uncertainty and the unknown, and true creativity lies in embracing that mystery.
Agnes De Mille emphasizes that living fully involves embracing uncertainty and the unknown. When one becomes overly certain and confident in their understanding, they cease to truly live and create, losing the spontaneity that defines the artistic spirit. The artist's journey is one of continuous exploration and vulnerability, suggesting that taking risks and accepting the potential for failure is essential to both life and artistry.
In practice
In a motivational speech about taking risks in career choices.
Ours is an upbeat, a hurried, hasty beat. It keeps pressing us to go farther, to include everything so that we can savor everything, so that we can know everything, so that we will miss nothing. Partly it's greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.
No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.
The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
Ballet technique never becomes easy, it becomes possible
To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.
We can't stand silence, because silence induces thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which, was that you can fail at what you don't want so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love
For the first time since her return, she felt pain, a violent pain, but it made her feel alive, because it was worth feeling.
This is the great challenge: to maintain passion for the everyday routine and the endlessly repeated act, to derive deep gratification from the mundane.
'Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it.
The Rykiel woman? She doesn't have time to stop time. She's too busy running. In her hands she's carrying a tote, a baby, a book, a camera.
I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.
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