Quotes by Alvin Ailey

• I always want more.
• Sometimes you feel bad about yourself when there's no reason to.
• The creative process is not controlled by a switch you can simply turn on or off; it's with you all the time.
• Racism tears down your insides so that no matter what you achieve, you're not quite up to snuff.
• One of the worst things about racism is what it does to young people.
• One of the processes of your life is to constantly break down that inferiority, to constantly reaffirm that I Am Somebody.
• Choreography is mentally draining, but there's a pleasure in getting into the studio with the dancers and the music.
• Dance is for everybody. I believe that the dance came from the people and that it should always be delivered back to the people.
• I am trying to show the world that we are all human beings and that color is not important. What is important is the quality of our work.
• I always want to have more dancers in my company.
• I'm attracted to long-legged girls with long arms and a little head.
• In this business, life is one long fund-raising effort.
• It will take very sophisticated marketing to achieve our aim of bringing more black people into the theater.
• Lena Horne is the sweetest and most adorable woman in the world.
• Money is a never-ending problem.
• We still spend more time chasing funds than we do in the studio in creative work.
• My feelings about myself have been terrible.
• My lasting impression of Truman Capote is that he was a terribly gentle, terribly sensitive, and terribly sad man.
• No matter what you write or choreograph, you feel it's not enough.
• If you live in the elite world of dance, you find yourself in a world rife with racism. Let's face it.
• Nothing personal; I just don't have people over.