These days, I think we could all agree that having a just-friend is not a bad thing.

When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love and faith.

You're only kidding yourself if you put creativity before craft.

Limits are a secret blessing, and bounty can be a curse.

Dancers are allowed, indeed encouraged, to remain children forever.

If you only do what you know and do it very, very well, chances are that you won't fail. You'll just stagnate, and your work will get less and less interesting, and that's failure by erosion.

I've always felt compelled to explore range, because, as far as I know, we're only here once. So let's see how much we can encompass.

The artist doesn't really think about consequences -- he or she does the work, stands back and looks at and thinks, 'Hmm, that could have worked better like this.' But as a person who needs to sell tickets to do the next work, one needs to analyze how it does or does not hit its mark.

I had to become the greatest choreographer of my time. That was my mission, and that's what I set out to do.

You have to believe there's something at the other side. And you have to have faith in yourself. You have to think that you have the tools to accomplish it.

I have to feel that each thing I've learned I can push to another point next time. I'm not very good with repetition. I would rather not work than feel that repetition is the order of the day.

In circuses, there is a lot of magic. Things become other things.

I've always thought my creative life began the moment my mother called me Twyla.

Dance is the stepchild of the arts.

Whether it's a painter finding his way each morning to the easel, or a medical researcher returning daily to the laboratory, the routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bolt of inspiration, maybe more.

There's this expression called postmodernism, which is kind of silly, and destroys a perfectly good word called modern, which now no longer means anything.

When dancing is right, the movement possesss a logic common to us all, an inevitability that takes it beyond the personal and egocentric and makes of it classical art.

In the not-for-profit world, there can be wastefulness because there's not the desperate urgency of when you're on a clock.

I see dance as glue for a community.

Art is an investigation.