60 Quotes by George Balanchine

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

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

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

I don’t have a past. I have a continuous present. The past is part of the present, just as the future is. We exist in time.

Music must be seen, and dance must be heard.

I’ve got more energy now than when I was younger because I know exactly what I want to do.

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. Everybody was in that little seed, and so everything can open. The tree of dance is like that. It just takes a long, long time to blossom.

Storyless is not abstract. Two dancers on the stage are enough material for a story; for me, they are already a story in themselves.

I am a cloud – in trousers.