Merce Quotes & Sayings

I think of dance as a constant transformation of life itself. — Merce Cunningham

Call me a bad private eye, but I came to the conclusion that nobody is happy with what they've got. You have a healthy relationship, then, you look for a spicy one. You have an unhealthy relationship, your struggle is to find a peaceful one. — Merce Cardus

Beauty just implies truth. — Merce Cardus

Whoever makes you laugh hard, he will make you cry madly. — Merce Cardus

And I got a strong feeling of the passage of time. Not the time of clouds and sun and rain and the moving stars that adorn the night, not spring when its time comes or fall, not the time that makes leaves bud on branches and then tears them off or folds and unfolds and colors the flowers, but the time inside me, the time you can't see but it molds us. The time that rolls on and on in people's hearts and makes them roll along with it and gradually changes us inside and out and makes us what we'll be on our dying day. — Merce Rodoreda

Falling is one of the ways of moving. — Merce Cunningham

Of course one's sense of identification with the nation is inflected by all kinds of particulars, including one's class, race, gender, and sexual identification. ... But [regarding] national character ... , aside from references to a national aesthetic - literary, musical, and choreographic, there are two poles I reference: minimalist and maximalist. I love them both - the cryptic poems of Emily Dickinson folded up in tiny packets and hidden away in a box, the sparse, understated choreographies of Merce; but also the "trashy, profane and obscene" poems of Whitman and Ginsberg, [and] Martha Graham's expressionism. I am, myself, a minimalist. But I love distortion guitar and the wild exhibitionism of so many American artists. Also, these divisions are false. Emily Dickinson, in fact, can be as trashy and obscene as the best of them! Anyway, Dickinson and Whitman are at the heart of this narrative. They are the Dancing Queen and the Guitar Hero. — Barbara Browning

Anything can feed you, depending on the way you look at it. — Merce Cunningham

There's no thinking involved in my choreography ... I don't work through images or ideas. I work through the body ... If the dancer dances, which is not the same as having theories about dancing or wishing to dance or trying to dance, everything is there. When I dance, it means: this is what I am doing. — Merce Cunningham

I'll buy you a blow-up doll. I'm sure my mate won't mind when I explain how hard up you are."
She didn't bother to punch him this time, just glared with promise of future retaliation. "Very funny. You wouldn't be laughing if you knew how sexually frustrated I am right now." [ ... ] "The last time was when that SilverBlade sentinel was in town for a communications meeting."
All amusement left Dorian's face. "You serious? That was months ago." A very long time to go without intimate touch. "Merce, that could get dangerous."
"I know. Do you think I don't know?" She thrust her hands through her hair. "Damn it Dorian! It's getting to the point where I'm starting to wonder if some of the wolves would be good in bed. [ ... ]
"Cat and wolf isn't a ... um ... normal combination."
"And Psy and cat is?" She made a face at him. "Yeah, yeah I know. Cat and wolf is strange." [ ... ]
"How about one of the Rats?" Dorian's eyes gleamed. — Nalini Singh

HELEN HAYES: "Which part of The Divine Comedy do you like the most, Tiziano?"
TIZIANO CONTI: "The fifth Canto."
HELEN HAYES: "The Hell, huh?"
TIZIANO CONTI: "L'inferno depicts the truth. — Merce Cardus

No matter where we come from, a little sugar is what everybody demands in life, what everybody needs in life. It's perhaps the main ingredient that keeps us alive. — Merce Cardus

I was told that I had to give grades to the students, which I wasn't particularly interested in doing. — Merce Cunningham

The only way to do it is to do it. — Merce Cunningham

Light or luminosity is created by the way elements are juxtaposed. They become reflective and a radiance comes from putting different things together. — Merce Cunningham

I'm not expressing anything. I'm presenting people moving. — Merce Cunningham

We know how Merce Cunningham works and how he thinks - we've been told, over and over again, by him and by others. — Robert Gottlieb

I understand now that a Trojan of literary achievement writes out of passion, out of necessity. — Merce Cardus

Breathing. Only the chore and sadness of breathing and breathing, as things change from tender to dry, new to old, the night-moon that grows thin then swells, the fireless sun that lights up, the soughing of the wind that transports, shatters, gathers, and dives away the clouds, raising and flattening the dust. Only the sorrow of going to sleep and waking up, feeling life without knowing where it comes from, aware that it will flee without knowing why it was given to you, why it is taken from you. Here you are: there is this and this and this. And now, enough. — Merce Rodoreda

My dance classes were open to anybody, my only stipulation was that they had to come to the class every day. — Merce Cunningham

The great passions had never been moved by a perfect body but by an evolved mind. — Merce Cardus

[Showing the apartment to Tiziano ]
MARLEEN WALKER: "Let me alert you that animals are banned in this building."
TIZIANO CONTI: "Am I breaking the law right now? — Merce Cardus

There are no fixed points in space, — Merce Cunningham

The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion, the steadfast and willing devotion to the labor that makes the classwork not a gymnastic hour and a half, or at the lowest level, a daily drudgery, but a devotion that allows the classroom discipline to become moments of dancing too ... — Merce Cunningham

He seems to be supporting her tenderly. But what holds them together is difficult to pin down.
In her memoir, she wrote that he once dropped her on her hip very painfully, and she had the distinct impression he'd done it on purpose.
What really goes on between two people is very difficult to say. — Barbara Browning

And when Quimet saw the doves flying above our roof and only above our roof, his face stopped looking so yellow and he said everything was okay. When the doves got sick of flying they started to come down, first one and then another. They went back in the dovecote like old ladies going to mass, taking little steps and jerking their heads like wind-up toys. — Merce Rodoreda

They want you to be afraid. They want to believe, and they want to suffer, suffer, only suffer, and they choke the dying man to make them suffer even more, so they'll suffer till their last breath, so that no good moment can ever exist. If the rocks and water rip away your face, it's for the sake of everyone. If you live with the belief that the river will carry away the village, you won't think about anything else. Let the suffering be removed, but not desire, because desire keeps you alive. That's why they're afraid. They are consumed by the fear of desire. They want you to suffer so they won't think about desire. You're maimed when you're little, the fear is hammered into the back of your head. Because desire keeps you alive, they kill it off while you're growing up. — Merce Rodoreda

You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.
— Merce Cunningham

To love is to risk. — Merce Cardus

Merce is my favorite artist in any field, — Jasper Johns

Dancing is a spiritual exercise in a physical form. — Merce Cunningham