Misty Copeland Quotes

Man must speak, then sing, then dance. The speaking is the brain, the thinking man. The singing is the emotion. The dancing is the Dionysian ecstasy which carries away all.

When I was young, I couldn't think about ballet because I had to focus on my own field. But once you secure your own performance area, you can indulge yourself in different territories. Fashion is one. And ballet is absolutely a fantasy, because it deals with the bodies in a different way.

I think because I am a physical person, and because my way of expressing and performing and storytelling or explaining has always been with my body, if I can combine the two I find it really liberating.

The first song I wrote was the first song I remember thinking, "Well, maybe I can do something here." The very first one. By the second one I knew I could do something.

The Dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing... there are times when the simple dignity of movement can fulfill the function of a volume of words. There are movements which impinge upon the nerves with a strength that is incomparable, for movement has power to stir the senses and emotions, unique in itself. This is the dancer's justification for being, and his reason for searching further for deeper aspects of his art.

All you can do as an artist is do what you think is an extension of you. You put down on paper ... who you are. That's what being an artist is all about. And when it gets done, you don't look back at it and say, Oh, I could have done that better.

I started to write songs. And I started to like what I was writing. I think it's a new way for me to express things that are closer to myself than when I play a role, because, of course, it's really not me. I'm finding a new way. I don't know what it's going to be. But I know that I will need to give it to people one day.

Singing other people's material was perceived, I think, as a weakness of my persona. The effect, though, was to make me dig my heels in and try even harder to combine the two.

I'm not expressing anything. I'm presenting people moving.

I think the beauty of the film industry is that if another person tries to become another person or act like another person or imitate another person, they don't really get too far. When that person starts to realize who they are and what they can bring to the table, they start to blossom and grow. With that, it's not so much me looking towards my predecessors who have paved the way in the industry - it's more getting inspired. I get little bits and pieces of what I can take from any and everybody.

It's good to try stuff. I wrote a book that I threw away, and I think I just wrote it so I could try stuff in it and not be scared

So many people think that practicing an art is a good way to make a living. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. I'm talking about singing in the shower, I'm talking about dancing to the radio, I'm talking about writing a poem to a friend.

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.

I think it's worthwhile to expand your comfort level and just do something awful. I wasn't trying to make music for money.

They are poets of gesture.

I think perhaps I've learned to be myself. I have a theory that all artists who would be important - painters and writers - must learn to be themselves. It takes a very long time.

I do love making films. I want to be a filmmaker that grows and progresses and does keep trying to push myself. I think that's it... and a bit of confidence maybe.

Patti, did art get us?' I looked away, not really wanting to think about it. 'I don't know, Robert. I don't know.' Perhaps it did, but no one could regret that. Only a fool would regret being had by art; or a saint.

I try to write every day. Sometimes the things come out well, and sometimes they don't. When they come out well you think, Wow, I must be really great; and when they come out poorly, you think you must be terrible, but the truth is that's how any process works.

Dancing, as Fred Astaire said, is next to ditch-digging. You sweat and you slave and the audience doesn't think you have a brain in your head.

I think that if I have one hope, 1 ambition, 1 aspiration for the next 4 or 5 years it would be that I can improve as a writer and just be able to say more of what I want to say throught the music.

I don't want to analyze myself or anything, but I think, in fact I know this to be true, that I enter the world through what I write. I grew up believing, and continue to believe, that I am a screw-up, that growing up with my family and friends, I had nothing to offer in any conversation. But when I started writing, suddenly there was something that I brought to the party that was at a high-enough level.

I did not think of writing as a career and I don't think that I did this ever really, but I think of writing as something that I could do, I should do alongside whatever else I was doing. It simply grew on me.

I could depend a lot on my shaking, though I never shimmied vulgarly and only to express myself.

All due respect, and trying to be as modest as I can be: I am a dancer.