Transplanting the ballet to the United States is like trying to raise a palm tree in Dakota.

- Lincoln Kirstein

While photography to Cartier-Bresson is constantly an intuitive process, it is never purely instinctive. It is founded on continuous intellection, on…

- Lincoln Kirstein

Dance design is not simply one element; it is that without which ballet cannot exist. As aria is to opera, words to poetry, color to painting, so seq…

- Lincoln Kirstein

She was chronologically in luck. She corresponded to necessity.

- Lincoln Kirstein

Ballet dancers are a self-chosen elite. To survive and surmount years of disciplinary preparation and seasons of even more arduous performance requir…

- Lincoln Kirstein

The candid camera is the greatest liar in the photographic family.... It is anarchic, naïve, and superficial.

- Lincoln Kirstein

If one had to define one essential gift with which a dancer needs to be endowed, there might be a rush of answers. A beautiful body, grace of line, g…

- Lincoln Kirstein

In liberal democracy and anxious anarchy, the traditional classic dance, compact of aristocratic authority and absolute freedom in a necessity of ord…

- Lincoln Kirstein

The domain of the ballet dancer is not earth but air.

- Lincoln Kirstein