Sufjan Stevens Quotes

There are so many tricks and so much eye candy in cinema. What I love about the classicism of genre is that there's a discipline. I think it's a healthy thing to resist all that candy.

I'm very optimistic that there are sincere believers out there that are okay with tradition but don't want to endorse traditionalism for the sake of traditionalism but want to embrace tradition because it's God-honoring. I think that's a beautiful thing.

Everything I was being shown was ABT, so I grew up watching these videos of [Mikhail] Baryshnikov, Gelsey [Kirkland] and Paloma [Herrera]. Paloma and Angel [Corella] were the first people I ever saw dance live.

I tell you, the arts - and especially ballet - the discipline is extraordinary. I was extremely impressed.

The heart of the classical repertory is the Tchaikovsky-Petipa 'Sleeping Beauty,' and no ballet is harder to get right.

At age 14, coming to the U.S., all I knew was American Ballet Theatre, Baryshnikov, Nureyev, and some of the European companies. I barely knew anything about Balanchine.

Orthodoxy: That peculiar condition where the patient can neither eliminate an old idea nor absorb a new one.

Creativity and innovation always builds on the past. The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it. Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past. Ours is less and less a free society.

Religious scholars, marginalized by modernization, seek to assert their own relevance by insisting on orthodoxy.

Since ballet has such a solid classical framework, everything is supposed to be a very specific way, so you learn to look at things with an eye towards perfection. But in acting, it isn't always necessarily good to be like that - really magical things can happen when it's unexpected and messy.

I think that I'm so fortunate to have found classical ballet. It completely changed my life and it shaped the person that I am today, on and off the stage.

They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions.

The Byzantines hammered away at their hard and orthodox symbols, because they could not be in a mood to believe that men could take a hint. The moderns drag out into lengths and reels of extravagance their new orthodoxy of being unorthodox, because they also cannot give a hint -- or take a hint. Yet all perfect and well-poised art is really a hint.

Teach nothing new, but instill into all men's breasts those things which the Fathers of revered memory have with harmony of statement taught... Preach nothing else than what we received from our forefathers... Accordingly, both in the rule of faith and in the observance of discipline, let the standard of antiquity be maintained throughout.

I'm a classical ballet dancer, and at the end of the day I want to be with American Ballet Theater, performing classical ballets.

When you train as a dancer, you understand you have to work exceptionally hard. I think dancers are the hardest - working people in show business. You have to push your body beyond where you thought it could go. It's athleticism. Perfection doesn't exist, but with classical ballet, there is an ideal, and I got obsessed with that ideal. In some ways, it was problematic because I don't have an ideal ballet body, but the discipline is what I carry with me to this day. That's my park, the discipline of dancing.

If you're in a band or think of yourself as a slightly creative person, you can get quite self-indulgent, so sometimes it's nice to have those people who bring you down to earth, but in a pleasant way.

I'm a better musician now, and I rarely practice because age has taught me the value of economy. And I think I'm a better writer now because I don't waste as much time, dilly-dallying and sassafrassin' and sloop and sloppin' and frying eggs. When you start writing, half the time you're just saying howdy to the page. My process now is a little more lean and muscular. I don't waste a lot of time. When I had kids, I learned how much time I had before, and how much time you actually need to do something. If you don't have time, you'll just do it and get it done.

Ballet really lends itself to that because there's such a sense of ritual, with wrapping the shoes every day and preparing new shoes for every performance. It's such a process. It's almost religious, in nature.

I'm old-fashioned beyond my years.

You always think, 'Oh, if only I had a little chalet in the mountains! How great that would be and I'd do all this writing' Except, no, I wouldn't. I'd do the same amount of writing I do now and the rest of the time I'd go stir crazy. If you're waiting for the perfect moment you'll never write a thing because it will never arrive. I have no routine. I have no foolproof anything. There's nothing foolproof.

I don't think I'd ever want to direct. I don't think I have as much discipline to direct as I would like to have, and I don't want my hair color to not go grey during that process.

I think that most of my writer friends are really compulsive. I think that's great. It's wonderful for them. It's just not my bag. It's not the way I work. But again, it's probably why my friend has ten books out and I have two.

The essence of Toryism is enjoyment?but as far as communicating and establishing your creed are concernedtrya little pleasure. The way to keep up old customs is, to enjoy old customs; the way to be satisfied with the present state of things is, to enjoy that state of things.

The man for whom the law exists - the man of forms, the conservative - is a tame man.