When We Dance Quotes & Sayings

That's when Sam grabbed my hand. "I love this song!" She led me to the dance floor. And she started dancing. And I started dancing. It was a fast song, so I wasn't very good, but she didn't seem to mind. We were just dancing, and that was enough. The song ended, and then a slow one came on. She looked at me. I looked at her. Then, she took my hands and pulled me in to dance slow. I don't know how to dance slow very well either, but I do know how to sway. Her whisper smelled like cranberry juice and vodka. "I looked for you in the parking lot today." I hoped mine still smelled like toothpaste. "I was looking for you, too." Then, we were quiet for the rest of the song. She held me a little closer. I held her a little closer. And we kept dancing. It was the one time all day that I really wanted the clock to stop. And just be there for a long time. — Stephen Chbosky

Back when I was in high school, I came out onstage with my guitar and had four guys playing behind me. We were just playing a dance, but I was standing in front of an audience rocking out. I'm still rocking out like when I was a kid. I haven't changed. — Dion DiMucci

On nights like this, when there is anxiety about, there is a glut of lovemaking. Then the moon is our dance master. He has us move in unison. He has us trill and carol in each other's ears until the stars themselves have swollen and ripened to our cries. As ever here, we find our consolations sowing seed. — Jim Crace

The point of our service in the church isn't how much we do and how important we are. The point is whether or not we're taking our place in the synchronized dance that God is orchestrating. When each one takes their assigned role, the design is fabulous! When one wants to do their own thing, needing attention, wanting to hog the show, or playing to the crowd, disaster ensues. — Carolyn Tennant

We are all creatures of the stars and their forces, they make us, we make them, we are part of a dance from which we by no means and not ever may consider ourselves separate. But when the Gods explode, or err, or dissolve into flying clouds of gas, or shrink, or expand, or whatever else their fates might demand, then the minuscule items of their substance may in their small ways express - not protest, which of course is inappropriate to their station in life - but an acknowledgement of the existence of irony: yes, they may sometimes allow themselves - always with respect - the mildest possible grimace of irony. — Doris Lessing

It starts off ridiculous and goes downhill from there as we each take a turn. We dance in a way that's only possible when there are no boys around. The rule is not to take yourself seriously, but whoever gets a solo has to keep as straight a face as possible and go for it. — Melina Marchetta

We are so accustomed to the comforts of "I cannot", "I do not want to" and "it is too difficult" that we forget to realize when we stop doing things for ourselves and expect others to dance around us, we are not achieving greatness. We have made ourselves weak. — Pandora Poikilos

When we did eventually get to the party - me walking next to Dad's Volvo driving at five miles an hour - I had a horrible time. Everyone laughed at first but then more or less ignored me. In a mood of defiant stuffed oliveness I did have a dance by myself but things kept crashing to the floor around me. The host asked if I would sit down. I had a go at that but it was useless. In the end I was at the gate for about an hour before Dad arrived. — Louise Rennison

When my marriage broke up ... I had just put on 45 pounds for my 'Shall We Dance?' character. I had to eat 10,000 calories a day just to put on weight while training with Tony Dovolani. I basically stayed in bed for a six-month rotation of depression naps. Dance helped me lose the weight. — Lisa Ann Walter

It is an Akido style of martial art. The family disturber throws their disturbance at me like a punch, and I flow with it and its energy, while taking care of myself and my opponent. In Mindell's work, an attitude of eldership means the elder uses dance to dance freely between the energy of the disturber and the energy of the one disturbed. In Mindell's talk, he explains that when we get down to this level, we are in Process Mind or into the mind behind the system itself. — Gary Reiss

We have parties at my house. My girlfriends and I play our iPods, with all of our favorite songs. We pick our songs and jump up on the counter and dance, and do runway stuff, and we take video with my camera. When I'm with my girlfriends, I act like I'm 19. — Avril Lavigne

I ended up doing a local AmDram musical when I was nine or so. We had to sing and dance and act. It was probably terrible, but I loved it. — Gemma Chan

I have a sister who is a dancer and dance teacher. We grew up dancing together. I wanted to become a ballerina when I was a kid, so she and I were always at ballet conservatories and going to school with our hair in buns. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

In 2007, when my husband Damian Woetzel took on the artistic direction at the Vail Valley International Dance Festival, we both felt it was important to offer the entire Vail community access to dance. — Heather Watts

We came together in a dance of death and so quickly was I sucked down into the vortex that when I came to the surface again I couldn't recognize the world. When I found myself loose the music had ceased; the carnival was over and I had been picked clean. — Henry Miller

Newsflash: it's not the guy who determines whether you're a sports fisher or a keeper-it's you. (Don't hate the player, hate the game.) When a man approaches you you're the one with total control over the situation-whether he can talk to you, buy you a drink, dance with you, get your number, take you home, see you again, all of that. We certainly want these things from you; that's why we talked to you in the first place. But it's you who decides if you're going to give us any of the things we want, and how, exactly, we're going to get them. Where you stand in our eyes is dictated by YOUR control over the situation. Every word you say, every move you make, every signal you give to a man will help him determine whether he should try to play you, be straight with you, or move on to the next woman to do a little more sport fishing. — Steve Harvey

(When)
When you call me nugget.
When you take pictures of me.
When you dance.
When you complement me.
When you laugh.
When your eyes squint as you smile.
When we make love when we're sick.
I fall more in love with you. — Crystal Woods

We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do. — Hermann Hesse

Life is like dancing. If we have a big floor, many people will dance. Some will get angry when the rhythm changes. But life is changing all the time. — Don Miguel Ruiz

Our maester chuckled at me and told us that Prince Rhaegar was certain to defeat this rebel. That was when Stark said, 'In this world only winter is certain. We may lose our heads, it's true ... but what if we should prevail?' My father sent him on his way with his head still on his shoulders. 'If you lose,' he told Lord Eddard, 'you were never here.'"
"No more than I was," said Davos Seaworth. — George R R Martin

Each heartbeat begins with a single, electrical impulse, or "spark." The distinctive sound we hear through a stethoscope, or when we place our head on a loved one's chest, is the sound of the heart valves opening and closing in perfect synchronicity with each other. It is a two-party rhythm - a delicate dance of systole and diastole, which propels the heart's electrically charged particles through its chambers roughly every second of the day, every day of our lives. — Jessi Kirby

I was inspired by a lot of people when I was young. Every band that came through town, to the theater, or the dance hall. I was at every dance, every night club, listened to every band that came through, because in those days we didn't have MTV, we didn't have television. — Quincy Jones

That is when I understood the magical meaning of the circle. If you go away from a row, you can still come back into it. A row is an open formation. But a circle closes up, and if you go away from it, there is no way back. It is not by chance that the planets move in circles and that a rock coming loose from one of them goes inexorably away, carried off by centrifugal force. Like a meteorite broken off from a planet, I left the circle and have not stopped falling. Some people are granted their death as they are whirling around, and others are smashed at the end of their fall. And these others (I am one of them) always retain a kind of faint yearning for that lost ring dance, because we are all inhabitants of a universe where everything turns in circles. — Milan Kundera

When I dance with him, one of my great loves, he is absolutely human, and when he turns to dip me or I step on his foot because we are both leading, I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer. The slow dance of what's to come and the slow dance of insomnia pouring across the floor like bath water. — Matthew Dickman

Initially, all idols seem to deliver exactly this escape from mere goodness into transcendent greatness. Consider the weather. In our scientific age, amidst the technological achievements of modernity, we have lost much of our reverence for and sense of helpless dependence on the weather. But imagine the sense of mastery and awe that must have overwhelmed the first people who pounded out an exuberant and desperate dance, in hopes of cajoling the sky god into bringing rain, when they were rewarded by an unexpected cloudburst an hour or a day later. Or the sense of awed gratitude and newfound power when a libation poured out on the ground seemed to deliver an abundant harvest. There must have been some such moments - how else would the rituals have become credible? — Andy Crouch

Poetry and music are the best at the highest level of the human mind. Out of poetry, out of their need for poetry, human beings have developed the idea of God. And so when we sing, when we dance, when we speak poetry we are speaking out of God's mouth, each other out of the music from God's heart. — Maya Angelou

WHEN IT IS DONE, WE WILL FLY FAR FROM HERE. FAR FROM THIS SCAB AND ITS POISONED SKY.
WE WILL DANCE IN THE STORMS, YOU AND I. — Jay Kristoff

The way we think may be completely different, but you and I are an ancient, archetypal couple, the original man and woman. We are the model for Adam and Eve. For all couples in love, there comes a moment when a man gazes at a woman with the very same kind of realization. It is an infinite helix, the dance of two souls resonating, like the twist of DNA, like the vast universe. — Banana Yoshimoto

We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. — Alan W. Watts

With 'Dance Moms' in L.A., we film on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. When we film in Pittsburgh, we film the same days, but we still dance in our studio when we're not filming, so I'm dancing every day except Sunday. — Maddie Ziegler

Laughter, song, and dance create emotional and spiritual connection; they remind us of the one thing that truly matters when we are searching for comfort, celebration, inspiration, or healing: We are not alone. — Brene Brown

It takes a strong man to love my sister. And you are a strong man. So her are some twin-tips for you from yours truly:
Read her Shakespeare when she cries.
Take walks in the rain and jump in the puddles with her.
Don't mind her when she calls you an asshole during 'that time of the month' - she's a total bitch at those times.
Buy her flowers because it's Tuesday.
Make her do things that scare her.
Don't be a pushover - we don't like that.
Don't be a dick either - we hate that.
Smile at her when you're mad.
Dance with her in the middle of the day.
Kiss her just because.
Love her forever. — Brittainy C. Cherry

Enzo looks up at me. Suddenly, the blackness in his eyes seems to fade, replaced by the familiar warm brown of his irises, the red slashes, the glow of life. I see a hint of his old self there, fighting through the darkness of the Underworld to gaze at me one last time. It is the look he'd given me when we used to dance.
This is the real Enzo.
"Let me go," he whispers. It is his voice. It is the voice that once comforted me, gave me strength. And as I try to take in his words, the final tendrils of the tether linking us unravel from around my heart, freeing me. — Marie Lu

The light within us dances when we smile. — Jay Woodman

Lady Gaga? She's cool! She works really hard. When we would have our dance rehearsals, she wasn't the singer that was like, 'Oh, I'll just stand in front.' She wanted to learn everything - she was doing the dance moves. She's a good dancer. — Caity Lotz

Hence in solitude, or that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul awaken the spirits to dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes ... — Percy Bysshe Shelley

We were at our best when we were playing in the dance halls of Liverpool and Hamburg. The world never saw that. — Pete Best

The Hopi Indians have a saying, "To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak." I know how much courage it takes to let people hear our hearts speak, but life is way too precious to spend it pretending like we're super-cool and totally in control when we could be laughing, singing, and dancing. — Brene Brown

Righteous, I like that. Kinda fitting when you think about it. If we danced and shared music, we'd be too busy en-joy-in' life to start a war. — E.A. Bucchianeri

It's rebellious, in a way, to choose joy, to dance, to love your life. It's much easier and much more common to be miserable. We could just live our normal, day-to-day lives, saving all the good living up for someday, but I think it's our job to live each day like it's a special occasion, because we've been given a gift. We get to live in this beautiful world. When I live purposefully and well, when I dance instead of sitting it out, when I let myself laugh hard, when I wear my favorite shoes on a regular Tuesday, that regular Tuesday is better. — Shauna Niequist

Empathy isn't just something that happens to us - a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain - it's also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It's made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because it's asked for, but this doesn't make our caring hollow. The act of choosing simply means we've committed ourselves to a set of behaviors greater than the sum of our individual inclinations: I will listen to his sadness, even when I'm deep in my own. To say "going through the motions" - this isn't reduction so much as acknowledgment of the effort - the labor, the motions, the dance - of getting inside another person's state of heart or mind. — Rebecca Skloot

It always amazes me when taking off from a stormy airport, how once you reach a certain altitude and get through the clouds, the sun shines as brightly as ever. If we learn to choose the experience of joy in our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits, we will move in tune with the universe and dance in a flow of light and love, and remain above the clouds. — Debra Moffitt

It's beautiful to dance alone, beautiful to dance with your children, beautiful to dance with your friends, beautiful to dance with your lover, or even collectively. But the ultimate dance is the one we do by ourselves, when we make ourselves known to God. — Gabrielle Roth

Luke! ... We have to be able to do cool dancing so we don't embarrass our child!"
"I'm a very cool dancer," replies Luke. "Very cool indeed,"
"No you're not!"
"I had dance lessons in my teens, you know," he retorts. "I can waltz like Fred Astire."
"Waltz?" I echo derisively. "That's not cool! We need to know all the street moves. Watch me."
I do a couple funky head-wriggle body-pop maneuvers, like they do on rap videos. When I look up, Luke is gaping at me.
"Sweetheart," he says. "What are you doing?"
"It's hip-hop!" I say. "It's street!"
"Becky! Love!" Mum has pushed her way through her dancing guests to reach me. "What's wrong? Has labour started?"
Honestly. My family has no idea about contemporary urban steet dance trends. — Sophie Kinsella

When I go to dance clubs, I always dance with big girls, so we finish at the same time. — Gabriel Iglesias

When I grew up we had gym at school, two or three dance classes after school, ice skating lessons, and all sorts of sports at our finger tips. We weren't glued to computers because they didn't exist, so being active was all we knew. — Lisa Loeb

Beyond the cultural differences that must be bridged in any international effort, combined with factors of national politics, priorities, and values, we continue to grapple with the essential paradox of public health that began our discussion: when the system is working effectively, it is a silent venture and there are relatively few outbreaks of disease. These very successes lead most of us down a complacent path of false confidence, apathy, and assumptions that the endless dance is over. To complicate matters further, microbes themselves are hardly monolithic or permanently settled beings. For every attempt we make to destroy or weaken them, they respond with an equal and opposite force. The goal of both sides is to assume leadership of the evolutionary waltz ever in progress. — Howard Markel

Amongst the flowers I
am alone with my pot of wine
drinking by myself; then lifting
my cup I asked the moon
to drink with me, its reflection
and mine in the wine cup, just
the three of us; then I sigh
for the moon cannot drink,
and my shadow goes emptily along
with me never saying a word;
with no other friends here, I can
but use these two for company;
in the time of happiness, I
too must be happy with all
around me; I sit and sing
and it is as if the moon
accompanies me; then if I
dance, it is my shadow that
dances along with me; while
still not drunk, I am glad
to make the moon and my shadow
into friends, but then when
I have drunk too much, we
all part; yet these are
friends I can always count on
these who have no emotion
whatsoever; I hope that one day
we three will meet again,
deep in the Milky Way. — Li Bai

Human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars. — Gustave Flaubert

The country is suffering from musical-chairs syndrome. We all dance around for a bit and then when we try to sit down again, somebody doesn't have a chair. We're running scared; we want ours. — Cynthia Heimel

No man can know his deliverer, nor yet the thief of his soul. Their faces are covered; they swirl in the mob at the masquerade ball. Wine flows, and dance follows dance, and we are never certain of their names until that Midnight when all masks are removed — Robert V.S. Redick

Silently we lie there, staring at each other. Eventually Ivy moves; to my delight she rolls closer to me, snuggling her head into the crook of my shoulder and placing a hand on my chest. Carefully I drape my arm around her waist and comb my fingers through her long hair while my other hand pulls the forgotten blanket over us.
"Rylan?" Ivy murmurs a minute later.
"Yeah?"
"Tell me again the words you told me when we were dancing."
I grin into her scalp. "I like you."
"I...like you, too."
Her fingers dance across my heart. — Colleen Boyd

When one considers the body in relation to dance, it is then that one truly realizes what suffering is: it is a part of our lives. No matter how much we search for it from the outside there is no way we can find it without delving into ourselves. — Tatsumi Hijikata

We can all dance when we find music that we love. — Giles Andreae

Want to dance? We have music this time. And I don't have to punch you when we finish. — Amy Tintera

We are all perfect clocks that the Divinity has set to ticking when, even before birth, the heart explodes into its lifelong dance. — Mark Helprin

When an actor is in the moment, he or she is engaged in listening for the next right thing creatively. When a painter is painting, he or she may begin with a plan, but that plan is soon surrendered to the painting's own plan. This is often expressed as 'The brush takes the next stroke.' In dance, in composition, in sculpture, the experience is the same: we are more the conduit than the creator of what we express — Julia Margaret Cameron

Where, then, do we find the truth? We find it in the body, in the woods, in the water, in the soil. We find it in music, dance, and sometimes in poetry. We find it in a baby's face, and in the adult's face behind the mask. We find it in each other's eyes, when we look. We find it in an embrace, which is, when we feel into it, being to being, an incredibly intimate act. We find it in laughter and sobs, and we find it in the voice behind the spoken word. We find it in fairy tales and myths, and the tales we tell, even if fictional. Sometimes embroidering a tale enlarges it as a vehicle for the truth. We find it in silence and stillness. We find it in pain and loss. We find it in birth and death. — Charles Eisenstein

When we give ourselves over completely to the spirit of the dance, it becomes a prayer — Gabrielle Roth

One of the women took his arm and smiled into his face until he looked at her. "We're going to dance in the woods later, when the moon comes up. You'll have to join us, of course," she said. She batted her eyelashes and added, "It's a full moon, so we'll go skyclad."
Simon frowned, trying to work out what she was saying. "Naked, you mean." His mouth fluttered as if he was trying to decide whether to grin sheepishly or lasciviously. — David Wellington

God's will is determined by His wisdom which always perceives, and His goodness which always embraces the intrinsically good. But when we have said that God commands thing only because they are good, we must add that one of the things intrinsically good is that rational creatures should freely surrender themselves to their Creator in obedience. The content of our obedience - the thing we are commanded to do -- will always be something intrinsically good, something we ought to do even if (by an impossible supposition_ God had not commanded it. But in addition to the content, the mere obeying is also intrinsically good, for, in obeying a rational creature consciously enacts its creaturely role, reverses the act by which we fill, treads Adam's dance backward, and returns. — C.S. Lewis

What happened is, when I was doing 'Taxi,' the last year, we did this thing where we had on top hats and tails, and we pretended to tap-dance. And I said to myself, 'You know, I always wanted to know how to do this.' So I got myself a teacher, and I started studying, and I got hooked. — Tony Danza

Experience tells us that we can only love because we are born out of love, that we can only give because our life is a gift, and that we can only make others free because we are set free by Him whose heart is greater than ours. When we have found the anchor places for our lives in our own center, we can be free to let others enter into the space created for them and allow them to dance their own dance, sing their own song and speak their own language without fear. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

In that last dance of chances I shall partner you no more. I shall watch another turn you As you move across the floor. In that last dance of chances When I bid your life goodbye I will hope she treats you kindly. I will hope you learn to fly. In that last dance of chances When I know you'll not be mine I will let you go with longing And the hope that you'll be fine. In that last dance of chances We shall know each other's minds. We shall part with our regrets When the tie no longer binds. — Robin Hobb

The rims of his eyelids were burning. A blow received straightens a man up and makes the body move forward, to return that blow, or a punch-to jump, to get a hard-on, to dance: to be alive. But a blow received may also cause you to bend over, to shake, to fall down, to die. When we see life, we call it beautiful. When we see death, we call it ugly. But it is more beautiful still to see oneself living at great speed, right up to the moment of death. Detectives, poets, domestic servants and priests rely on abjection. From it, they draw their power. It circulates in their veins. It nourishes them. — Jean Genet

When are you going to get a fella?" Lily asks Rose after a year or two of dancing. "I have one who wants to take me kissing, but I think I should wait for you to have one."
Rose flushes. "I don't think I'll ever have a fella."
"Why not?" Lily bristles. "We're plenty pretty."
"I don't like the look of them," Rose says.
Lily purses her lips at the dance floor, appraising.
After a moment long, Rose says, "Any of them."
Lily looks at her a long time, as Rose tries not to hyperventilate.
Then Lily shrugs and says, "Well, then it's you who should have learned to lead, isn't it?" and when Rose clasps Lily's hand, she clasps it back.
It's the closest they've ever been. — Genevieve Valentine

Love? Love? Love is not safe, my lady silk, love is dangerous. It is deceitfully sweet like wine from a fresh palm tree at dawn. Love is fine for singing about and love songs are good to listen to, sometimes even to dance to. But when we need to count on human strength, and when we have to count pennies for food for our stomachs and clothes for our backs, love is nothing. Ah my lady, the last man any woman should think of marrying is the man she loves. — Ama Ata Aidoo

Being nonreactive to destructive or hostile behaviour does not imply passive acceptance of it. Rather, it means we need to deal with it, take off our blinders and see the unacceptable. To redirect the destructive enery, we must dance with the shadow, not kill it. When we can achieve this stance, we learn to confront maladaptive or nonproductive behaviour matter-of-factly, without becoming embroiled in the heat of our own emotions. This nonreflexive style of being in the world is potent. — Adele Von Rust McCormick

When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance. — Thomas Merton

When a smile touches our hearts. When the forest stills us to peace. When music moves us to rapture. When we really love, laugh or dance with joy. We are at one with the Angels. — Dorothy Maclean

When you step back and watch people, you realize that we use every single body part. Movement, dance - I find it genius because it's ultimate expression, really. — Jude Law

Which is why you deal with demons. (Acheron)
Who are even more pathetic than humans when you think about it. Personally, I'd rather play video games. Wouldn't it be great if we could suck the souls of the people we hated into the box, shoot them down and then dance on their entrails? (Jaden) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Bound for your distant home"

Bound for your distant home
you were leaving alien lands.
In an hour as sad as I've known
I wept over your hands.
My hands were numb and cold,
still trying to restrain
you, whom my hurt told
never to end this pain.

But you snatched your lips away
from our bitterest kiss.
You invoked another place
than the dismal exile of this.
You said, 'When we meet again,
in the shadow of olive-trees,
we shall kiss, in a love without pain,
under cloudless infinities.'

But there, alas, where the sky
shines with blue radiance,
where olive-tree shadows lie
on the waters glittering dance,
your beauty, your suffering,
are lost in eternity.
But the sweet kiss of our meeting ......
I wait for it: you owe it me ....... — Alexander Pushkin

You see, Risa, survival is a dance between our needs and our consciences. When the need is great enough, and the music loud enough, we can stomp conscience into the ground.'
Risa closes her eyes. She knows the dance ...
'It's the way of the world,' Divan continues. 'Look at unwinding, society's grand gavotte of denial. There will, no doubt, come a time when people look to one another and say, 'My God, what have we done?' But I don't believe it will happen any time soon. Until then, the dance must have music; the chorus must have its voice. Give it that voice, Risa. Play for me.'
But Risa's fingers offer him nothing, and the Orgao Organico holds the obdurate, unyielding silence of the grave. — Neal Shusterman

When we acknowledge that all of life is sacred and that each act is an act of choice and therefore sacred, then life is a sacred dance lived consciously each moment. When we live at this level, we participate in the creation of a better world. — Scout Cloud Lee

When people say you're doing something radical in rock or dance music, I'm not sure how special that is. What we do is so old-fashioned. It's like trying to do something innovative in tap-dancing. — Jonny Greenwood

Painters should shut up and paint and when we stop painting we should dance or have sex or get a massage or take a shower and we shouldn't be talking about painting. — Chris Martin

I never taught people where to step on '2', because when I learned how to dance there was no '2'. We just danced to the music. — Frankie Manning

Relationships are a development and a dance between our inner male and female sides. A one-sided development of the male side leads to ego, struggle, destructivity and a separation from life.
A one-sided development of our female side leads to dependence and passivity. It is when we have developed a balance and harmony between both our male and female side that a new spark of joy, creativity and wholeness arises within ourselves. — Swami Dhyan Giten

Because wanton or venal lips has murmured the same words to him, he only half believed in the sincerity of those he was hearing now; to a large extent they should be disregarded, he believed, because such exaggerated language must surely mask commonplace feelings: as if the soul in its fullness did not sometimes overflow into the most barren metaphors, since no one can ever tell the precise measures of his own needs, of his own ideas, of his own pain, and human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we long to do is make music that will move the stars to pity. — Gustave Flaubert

What do you do when you're wound up?' she asked. 'Do you play that drum?'. 'No,' said the child. 'We used to dance.' 'But now we walk,' said the father. 'And behind us an enemy walks faster.' 'That's life,' said Euterpe. — Russell Hoban

It felt like we were reliving the first day of the school year, when students and teachers do the get-to-know-you dance - teachers tell students something about who they are, students pretend to care, and then vice-versa. — Tucker Elliot

Septimus. When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be all alone, on an empty shore.
Thomasina. Then we will dance. Is this a waltz? — Tom Stoppard

When I dance, I look like I'm a dad at a prom. I never grasped my limbs. Ever since puberty I've just kind of felt like we don't understand each other. — Jennifer Lawrence

But we should not cling! A plague upon fundamentalists and literalists! I am reminded of a story of Lord Krishna when he was a cowherd. Every night he invites the milkmaids to dance with him in the forest. They come and they dance. The night is dark, the fire in their midst roars and crackles, the beat of the music gets ever faster - the girls dance and dance and dance with their sweet lord, who has made himself so abundant as to be in the arms of each and every girl. But the moment the girls become possessive, the moment each one imagines that Krishna is her partner alone, he vanishes. So it is that we should not be jealous with God. — Yann Martel

Speaking about anthros: "Spear decided, 'Something is wrong. When we live with our spirits, we become more like them. They dance. We dance. They steal and rape women. We steal and rape women. They fight and kill. We fight and kill. But these nabas don't do what they say their spirit does. They say he's generous. But they're not. They say he's kind. But they're not. — Mark Andrew Ritchie

Jesus now spoke again. Mack, I don't want to be first among a list of values; I want to be at the center of everything. When I live in you, then together we can live through everything that happens to you. Rather than the top of a pyramid, I want to be the center of a mobile, where everything in your life - your friends, family, occupation, thoughts, activities - is connected to me but moves with the wind, in and out and back and forth, in an incredible dance of being. — Wm. Paul Young

Imagine the spirit as a mansion. You'll guess we don't use many rooms. Apart from a few moments in childhood we don't dance around it in sunlight. But there's a traffic of things in and out, and what happens is that unwanted bulks can gather inside. Gather and gather, menacing us. Unable to shift them, we hide in ever-smaller spaces. And in our last hole, life offers a choice: to play out our demise in parallel theatres - psychosis, zealotry, religion, cancer, addiction - or to bow quietly out. But beware: life doesn't ask these high questions when we're confident and fresh - it waits for hopelessness. — D.B.C. Pierre

How do we seize the past? Can we ever do so? When I was a medical student some pranksters at the end-of-the-term dance released into the hall a piglet which had been smeared with grease. It squirmed between legs, evaded capture, squealed a lot. People fell over trying to grasp it, and were made to look ridiculous in the process. The past often seems to behave like that piglet. — Julian Barnes

What will they say, Ce, when we dance together? I want to do that. I want to hold you in my arms, in front of the entire damn world. Would you do that? Would you dance with me? — L.B. Gregg

When we feel lonely we keep looking for a person or persons who can take our loneliness away. Our lonely hearts cry out, 'Please hold me, touch me, speak to me, pay attention to me.' But soon we discover that the person we expect to take our loneliness away cannot give us what we ask for. Often that person feels oppressed by our demands and runs away, leaving us in despair. As long as we approach another person from our loneliness, no mature human relationship can develop. Clinging to one another in loneliness is suffocating and eventually becomes destructive. For love to be possible we need the courage to create space between us and to trust that this space allows us to dance together. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

It was extraordinary 'cause I was 17 years old when I first danced with Edward Villella. And we were both young. But I had seen him dance, and he was already a star. So he was just so gentle and wonderful and kind, and we had a great rapport together. He was one of the most exciting dancers of our day. — Patricia McBride

Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we rceive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best
if you like, it 'works' best
when, through long familiarity, we don't have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. — C.S. Lewis

To be conscious and enlightened, Spirit must fill our bodies. Trance Dancing is an invitation to Spirit to embody us. When Spirit accepts, we dance from the inside out. — Frank Natale

How do we live in freedom? We live in freedom when we come to believe, know, receive, and embrace the boundless love of God for us - when we are captured by his goodness, his faithfulness, his honor, his sacrifice, his heart that yearns for us. Then we can dance for an audience of One. Because we are so completely loved. We are safe and secure in the love of God. Every moment of our lives. — Stasi Eldredge

The New York Times denounces America's "dancing with dictators." Guilty as charged. Dance we do. And without apology. With no more apology than Franklin Roosevelt offered when he reportedly said of Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza, "He may be a son of a bitch. But he's our son of a bitch."

Roosevelt was a grownup. He made choices. He slew his dragons one at a time. He understood that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds. He understood that in an international arena populated by sons of bitches, you make your distinctions, or you die. — Charles Krauthammer

I spent nine days in the Downtown Los Angeles City Jail. The judge gave me a suspended sentence and I went to work that night - wailed just like nothing happened. What strucked me funny though - I laughed real loud when several movie stars came up to the bandstand while we played a dance set and told me, when they heard about me getting caught with marijuana, they thought marijuana was a chick. Woo boy - that really fractured me! — Louis Armstrong

Although she's miles away, still I remember spending that December, staring at the sounds she made with her breath. And when I asked what it was she was up to "five foot nothing" came from her cracked honky-tonk lips and from a calico bonnet monstrous curls unfurled like apple-blossoms scattering about into the back-country. And wreaths of snowflakes swarmed over the hems of her garments and wandered with us into the ether on John F. Kennedy Avenue, and mingled in the traffic. While she held my head together like Jackie Onassis.
Although she's miles away, still I remember her pinning roses to a lapel and the icicles that hung upon the city when I told her "I may not be a handsome man and I probably don't have what it takes to make you forget for long, but know that I'm grateful we had this little drink and a dance before I'm sent ony way." Down John F. Kennedy Avenue, thumbing to Dallas. She held my head together
Like Jackie Onassis. — Valentine Xavier

My grandmother once told my mother that there is a splice of quartz inside each of us, like the quartz inside a compass or clock. We feel the stone glow warm when we find what it is we are meant to do. My grandmother was a singer; voice was her quartz, a second heartbeat that reminded her always of who she was. My mother's quartz is dance and Joaquin's is the piano. The saddest souls in the world, my mother believes, are those who never discover this thing within them. There is a difference between those who wander in search of that glow and those who wander in hopes of evading it. It is frightening, after all - that first awakening when the radiance within threatens to topple you. Even more terrifying is the decision to allow the fire to continue smoldering, because the brighter you let it get, the more terrible the darkness should you ever let it out."

- Elizabeth Genovise "Irises" (O. Henry prize winner 2016) — Elizabeth Genovise

AUGUST 25 A Special Angel By Maria Gillard Thank you for my childhood, for my laughing heart and soul for all your magic, and for being bold Thank you for being my mom's best friend and loving me no matter what state I was in Thanks for chives and roses, popcorn and TV Thanks for always letting me be me Thanks for rides to swim meets and yummy chocolate cake Thanks for being strong and true when my heart was aching Thank you for the blankets and pillow for my head Thank you for the back hill and the Westside River bed Thank you for the smell of melting butter on the stove Thank you for the nickels you gave me for the store You were a special angel sent to all of us with your disguise of freckles, kisses, hugs and guts We know you're out there somewhere and you'll stay inside our dreams We know wherever you are there's a brilliant golden beam Watch over us, dear angel, as you go on your way and we will laugh and sing and dance again someday Amen — Cathleen O'Connor