“We all fear loneliness, madness, dying. Shakespeare and Walt Whitman, Leopardi and Hart Crane will not cure those fears. And yet these poets bring us fire and light.”

“Silence is the source of healing. When we bring things from within ourselves out into the light of awareness, a healing process happens. In the silence, we can let go of all anger, sadness, fear, loneliness and frustration.”

“I meet new Walt Whitmans everyday. There are a dozen of them afloat. I don't know which Walt Whitman I am.”

“I bring you the dance. I bring you the idea that is going to revolutionise our entire epoch. Where have I discovered it? By the Pacific Ocean, but the waving pine-forests of Sierra Nevada. I have seen the ideal figure of youthful American dancing over the top of the Rockies. The supreme poet of our country is Walt Whitman. I have discovered the dance that is worthy of the poem of Walt Whitman. I am indeed the spiritual daughter of Walt Whitman. For the children of America I will create a new dance that will express America. I bring to your theatre the vital soul that it lacks, the soul of the dancer. For you know...that the birth of the theatre was the dance, that the first actor was the dancer. He danced and sang. That was the birth of the tragedy, and until the dancer in all his spontaneous great art returns to the theatre, your theatre will not live in its true expression!”

“Forgive us, O Lord, we acknowledge ourselves as type of the common man,Of the men and women who shut the door and sit by the fire;Who fear the blessing of God, the loneliness of the night of God, the surrender required, the deprivation inflicted;Who fear the injustice of men less than the justice of God;Who fear the hand at the window, the fire in the thatch, the fist in the tavern, the push into the canal,Less than we fear the love of God.”

“The Shield was another of the Fear's names. According to Laughter, it means he shields the seed of Abraham the way a man starting a fire shields the flame. When Sarah was about to die childless, the Fear gave her a son. When Abraham was about to slaughter the son, the Fear gave him the ram. He is always shielding us like a guttering wick, Laughter said, because the fire he is trying to start with us is a fire that the whole world will live to warm its hands at. It is a fire in the dark that will light the whole world home.”