FRED ASTAIRE

I have no desire to prove anything by dancing. I have never used it as an outlet or a means of expressing myself. I just dance. I just put my feet in the air and move them around.

I don't want to be the oldest performer in captivity... I don't want to look like a little old man dancing out there.

This search for what you want is like tracking something that doesn't want to be tracked. It takes time to get a dance right, to create something memorable.

I just put my feet in the air and move them around.

The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.

Dancing is a sweat job.

Disco is just jitterbug.

The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style.

Chance is the fool's name for Fate

I don't remember anybody ever pointing me out as a dancing prodigy, but I played a not bad second base.

I had some ballet training but didn't like it. It was like a game to me.

I don't like top hats, white ties, and tails.

It's nice that all the composers have said that nobody interprets a lyric like Fred Astaire. But when it comes to selling records I was never worth anything particularly except as a collector's item.

The unpadded shoulders, the three-buttoned long and boxy coat, the too-short, thin pants, and the thin ties with striped buttoned shirts in dark colors-well, I suppose this may go very well with some personalities but it's not for me. To me, all such look like TV producers. Maybe they want to.

For ballroom dancing, remember that your partners have their own distinctive styles also. Cultivate flexibility. Be able to adapt your style to that of your partner. In doing so, you are not surrendering your individuality, but blending it with that of your partner.

I'm just a hoofer with a spare set of tails.

Slippery stages were the terror of my life.

I just told my agent to forget all other projects for me. I was waiting for Audrey Hepburn. She asked for me, and I was ready. This could be the last and only opportunity I’d have to work with the great and lovely Audrey Hepburn and I was not missing it. Period.

I have never had anything that I can remember in the business - and that includes all the movies and the stage shows and everything - that I didn't enjoy. I didn't like some of the small-time vaudeville, because we weren't going on and getting better. Aside from that, I didn't dislike anything.

If the dance is right, there shouldn't be a single superfluous movement.

People think I was born in top hat and tails.

There comes a day when people begin to say, 'Why doesn't that old duffer retire?' I want to get out while they're still saying Astaire is a hell of a dancer.

Of course, Ginger was able to accomplish sex through dance. We told more through our movements instead of the big clinch. We did it all in the dance.

I don't make love by kissing, I make love by dancing.

Do it big, do it right, and do it with style.